Wellington gets 2.5 inches of rain; afternoon storm was a bit nasty
by Tracy McCue, Sumner Newscow — Two storm fronts went through Wellington this morning and afternoon, resulting in a fair amount of chaos, lost electricity, and your usual hyperbole from social media warriors afterwards.
The afternoon storm was a strange one descending on Wellington around 1 p.m. coming from the north with sheets of rain that seemed to shoot the rain sideways. The loss of power came shortly thereafter.
The City of Wellington was without electricity for about 45 minutes from 1:15 to 2 p.m. resulting from power line poles breaking into two at the 700 block of East 20 Street South, south of Wellington. The Wellington gas turbine was fired up for much of the afternoon providing power to residents around 2 p.m. when they otherwise would have none.
Broken lines due to high winds at 20th Street left Wellington powerless for around 30 minutes.
Our trusty Sumner County weather source said Wellington received 2.5 inches of rain throughout the day — 1 inch in the morning and 1.5 inches or rain in the afternoon.
There was plenty of tree damage. Here is a picture taken by Tammy Burden at Harvey and Elm.
Photo by Tammy Burden.
Portable buildings on the east side of town near Wal-Mart Supercenter were also severely damaged.
The Wellington Compost site will be open Tuesday, July 31 from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. to accommodate cleanup from this afternoon’s storm. Also city crews will continue throughout the day picking up limbs along the streets in the affected areas of town. This will consist of limbs and trees growing on the public right-of-way.
A tornado warning was issued for east central Sumner County but from what we can tell there was no damage caused by a funnel cloud.
