Kara Berger received a Severe Thunderstorm Warning alert on her phone Wednesday evening while watching her husband’s softball game in Lawrence, Kansas. The wind speed increased within five minutes of the warning, as intense straight-line winds made it difficult to walk.
LAWRENCE, Kan. – A severe thunderstorm turned an evening softball game in Kansas into a mad scramble for cover as 70 mph wind gusts blasted the field Wednesday evening.
The powerful storm’s force tore through the Lawrence area in seconds. The howling winds created a truly awe-inspiring display of nature’s raw power near Clinton Lake.
Kara Berger was at the Clinton Lake Softball Complex, watching her husband’s softball game, when she received a Severe Thunderstorm Warning alert on her phone. Radar showed the storm cell still west of Topeka, so she didn’t think it would reach her for another 20 minutes.
“Prior to that storm warning, it was incredibly hot and humid and there was zero wind, like nothing,” Berger told FOX Weather.
Within five minutes of receiving the warning, Berger noticed a slight increase in wind speed. Then, in a matter of seconds, the wind intensified rapidly.
“Insane wind gusts, like I’ve never experienced, came out of nowhere, which is what you see in the video,” she added. “It was pure straight-line winds to where you could hardly walk.”
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Kansas was hit by intense thunderstorms, with wind speeds surpassing 70 mph Tuesday evening.
(Kara Berger)
As the extreme weather event escalated, not only was the sand being carried by the wind, but also small gravel from the ballfields started to scatter, adding to the worsening conditions.
“I’ve lived in Kansas my entire life, and I’ve never seen or experienced anything like what happened,” Berger said.
The National Weather Service in Topeka said wind speeds as high as 71 mph were reported at Lawrence Regional Airport as the storms rolled along the I-70 corridor and into Missouri. Other gusts along the line of storms reached over 90 mph.
(FOX Weather)
The storms caused widespread outages, surpassing 100,000 electric customers in the hours after the storm, peaking at over 250,000 outages. As of Thursday morning, outages remained near 200,000 across Nebraska, Kansas and Missouri.
The FOX Forecast Center described the storm system as a bow echo as it moved across the Cornhusker State’s largest city, resulting in extensive wind damage. Wind gusts around Omaha’s Eppley Airfield, the region’s busiest airport, reached 90 mph.
Despite the flurry of severe weather, local authorities did not report any deaths associated with the event.