Storms wreak havoc around Vernon County

Jim Wilson of 729 N. Clay St. in Nevada removes a limb from the car of his neighbor, Marjorie Seitz, after the storm that swept through Nevada early Monday morning. Damage was widespread in the city, but more concentrated on the south side of town. Downed trees and limbs pulled power, telephone and cable lines down with them.

Severe storms moving through Vernon County Monday caused a school function to be cut short and left quite a bit of damage in the form of downed trees and limbs, power and cable outages and some plugged storm drains in its wake.

The last storm, which hit around 6:15 p.m. resulted in a tornado warning to be issued briefly for southeast Vernon County, and school officials at Sheldon -- not taking any chances -- halted the athletic banquet under way at the high school and moved everyone into the basement until the warning expired and the storm passed.

An earlier storm, beginning just after midnight, produced high winds and dumped about an inch and a half of rain across much of the county, according to Springfield National Weather Service meteorologist Ryan Kardell. Weather recording devices at the Nevada Airport recorded one "measured gust" of 63 mph, according to Kardell. Unlike the last severe storm affecting the area, there was no reported hail associated with this storm.

When the rain from the storm is added to the late winter snows and other spring rains recently received in the area, Kardell said he is confident the drought that has plagued the county and state for so long has been broken. Kardell said there is still some concern in the far northwest corner of the state, but for the most part, the drought is over.

Downed trees and limbs inevitably mean downed power and service lines and this storm was no different in that respect. A Kansas City Power & Light Co. spokesperson said "outages were widespread," and 77,000 customers were affected across their service area, a little more than 7,000 of them in this area. Power had been restored to 83 percent of customers by 7 a.m. According to the company's Powerwatch website, only one percent of local customers were still out of power at that time.

The downed limbs and trees also created some road blockages in Nevada. Sarah Haney said she made a late night trip to the Fastrip at Austin Boulevard and Adams Street about 12:30 a.m. and found South Adams Street completely blocked, "I had to go around the block," she said.

Nevada Public Works Director Roger Beach said his crews hit the street about the same time, and there was also a blockage on Highway BB on the far south side of the city. Beach said even though there was damage all over the city, the south side "took the worst blow" of the storm.

The damage was mostly downed limbs and lines. Power, phone and cable TV lines were all affected. Beach also said some of the city's storm drains backed up but weren't any more of a problem than they usually are. He expected his crews to be done cleaning up by the end of the day.

Craig Montgomery, public relations director for Fidelity Communications said a few of the company's customers had short outages caused by falling tree limbs on cable wires, but for the most part, there was "very little damage."

"Everything in the system held strong," he said.

Vernon County Emergency Management Director Dennis Kimrey also confirmed the majority of the damage was downed limbs, and in some cases, whole trees. The rural areas weren't as hard hit as the city.

Kimrey said he received one unconfirmed report of a tornado in the far southeast corner of the county. He said flooding was not a problem Monday morning but further rain may create some flooding.

"The ground is saturated, he said, adding more rain may cause problems.