'For their safety FAA staff in the tower cab evacuated. 'KCI Airport is at ' Air Traffic Control (ATC) Zero,'' an update on the airport's Twitter account said. The air traffic control tower at Kansas City International Airport was evacuated at about 5:50 p.m. They should cover a distance of at least 250 miles, according to a 2005 study by Walker Ashley and Thomas Mote.Ĭlick here to read more about these types of storms from our meteorologists.Īnd here's a look at the highlights from Wednesday afternoon into the late night: Airport Control Tower Evacuated in Kansas City They're usually produced by one or more curved lines of thunderstorms known as a bow echo or squall line.Ī single severe thunderstorm may produce an area of damaging winds only a mile or two wide and a few miles long, but derechos can produce damage tens of miles wide and hundreds of miles long. The winds can be as strong as 60 to 100 mph or higher in extreme cases. Storms Met Derecho Criteriaĭerechos are large clusters of high-impact and long-lasting thunderstorms that most commonly form in late spring and summer and cause widespread destruction to trees, power lines and sometimes structures.įrom the Spanish word for 'straight,' these windstorms leave wide, long areas of straight-line wind damage. The rest are in Colorado, Kansas, Iowa, Missouri, Illinois and Minnesota.Įach power outage represents a single customer account, meaning millions are impacted by the widespread outages. The bulk of those were due to high winds in Michigan (239,000 outages) and Wisconsin (138,000).

More than half a million homes and businesses were without power in eight states as of about 11:30 a.m. Highway 151 in eastern Iowa on Wednesday evening, the AP reported, citing the Iowa State Patrol. The driver died when high winds rolled the vehicle onto its side on southbound U.S. Sheridan County Emergency Management Director Don Koerperich said the fire wasn't near any large population areas.įires were also reported in other parts of Kansas as well as in Oklahoma and Texas. Some residents in Quinter, along Interstate 70 in the northwest part of the state, were told to leave their homes after a wildfire broke out amid the high winds, the AP reported. Homes Evacuated Due to Wildfire in Kansas Death Toll Rises to Fiveįour additional deaths are being connected to Wednesday's storms, according to the Associated Press, adding to one reported earlier.Ī 65-year-old man died in Olmsted County, Minnesota, when a 40-foot tree fell outside his home, and three people were killed in two separate car crashes in Kansas blamed on blinding dust kicked up by high winds. Prior to this outbreak, there hadn't been a December tornado documented in Minnesota dating to 1950.Īnd that's just one of a long list of notables. 'I can say with some confidence that this event - the heat and tornadoes - is among the most, if not the most, anomalous weather events ever on record for the upper Midwest,' weather historian Christopher Burt said. Wednesday's widespread windstorm, severe weather outbreak and unusual heat from the Rockies and Plains into the upper Midwest were so bizarre for December that even weather historians were in awe. Here's the latest: Bizarre December Weather Leaves Historians in Awe The storms brought rain, snow, hail and severe weather across a wide swath of the country. Five deaths are being blamed on high winds from a storm system that rolled across the Plains and Midwest Wednesday night, with gusts over 90 mph and damaging tornadoes that ripped roofs off homes, fueled wildfires, left hundreds of thousands without power and created treacherous driving conditions.

Kansas city weather december 2021