DROUGHT, NOW FLOODS....

Drought, now floods: South-central Kan. sees extremes

Wichita has seen 13.4 inches since July 21

Posted: August 6, 2013 - 2:25pm

By The Associated Press

WICHITA — More wet weather is on the way for drenched counties in central Kansas, where swollen rivers are raising new fears of flooding.

Heavy rains that began last week have already caused flash flooding and swamped some homes, but people are now more concerned about the next wave of storms expected to begin Wednesday and stretch into the weekend. It could include severe thunderstorms, flooding, tornadoes, microbursts and large hail throughout the state.

Among the places seeing the worst of the flash flooding is Hutchinson, where the National Weather Service reported 7 inches of rain fell from Saturday through Monday.

“My real concern is that it is going to continue to rain —and it seems like I should be building an ark, but don’t have the plans,” Reno County Emergency Management Director Bill Guy said. “We have been in a drought for the last couple of years and I think we are trying to make up for it in a week.”

About 75 nursing home residents remain at a local hospital Tuesday after being relocated to the facility Sunday when a couple of inches of water covered the floor of the Elmwood Care Facility, Guy said. And about 200 residents who were evacuated Sunday from a mobile home park in Reno County were allowed back to their homes on Monday.

An as-yet-undetermined number of homes in Reno County have also flooded, he said.

Several dozen roads in Reno County remain closed and two bridges, one over the Little Arkansas River and the other over the Ninnescah River, were damaged and will remain closed until the river recedes enough so they can be inspected and repaired.

KWCH reported that the floodwaters also poured into city hall in Newton. Storms also damaged automated systems at the wastewater treatment plant and the city’s water system, requiring staff to manually run the systems and check water levels in towers for Newton, Halstead and Sedgwick.

It has been raining off and on in Kansas since July 21, with Wichita getting 13.4 inches from that date through Monday — the second highest amount of rain for the period since 1888, NWS meteorologist Vanessa Pearce said.

“It was not until we got to the last week of the month that many locations saw day after day of significant rainfall and then as you got into the first part of August it is like, ‘All right we have finally filled the bucket and now we have started to overflow,’ “ State Climatologist Mary Knapp said.

Winds ranging from 80 to 100 mph were reported Monday night in Pratt and Butler counties, causing extensive damage at the Shady Creek marina at El Dorado Lake, officials said. Power outages were reported in Butler, Pratt, Harvey and Greenwood counties.

As of Tuesday morning, at least 14 Kansas counties were under a flood warning. South-central and southeast Kansas has flooding on the Little Arkansas River and the Arkansas River, Pearce said.

Local disaster declarations have been issued in Barton, Bourbon, Clay, Cloud, Greenwood, Harvey, McPherson, Reno and Rice counties, according to the Kansas Adjutant General’s Department.

The drought monitor update, to be issued later this week, will show the end of drought conditions in central, north-central and parts of southeast Kansas, Knapp said. The drought persists in far western Kansas.

“A week of rain, while it is very welcome, still has a long way to go to make improvements in the western third of the state,” Knapp said.