These funnel clouds formed to the north of Wellington. This picture was taken at 1822 Edgewood Dr. yesterday evening by Preston Frazier.

by Tracy McCue, Sumner Newscow — Last night’s thunderstorm was a lot like a high school prom – lots of hype, looked pretty at the time, provided plenty of excitement, but in the end, will soon be forgotten.

Funnel clouds formed on the north side of Wellington just north of Worden Park and the Wellington Christian Academy. But despite those dark ominous rotating clouds shooting a couple of slivering, spiraling funnels toward earth to make us all go ape-feces crazy, nothing materialized. And Wellington lived to see another day.

But you might want to keep the basement doors unlocked. Sumner County Emergency Management Director James Fair said there is potential for similar storms tonight.

“I can’t confirm there was a touch down in any part of Sumner County,” said James Fair, Sumner County Emergency Management Director. “What damage we did have was caused by straight-line winds.”

The straight line winds were most certainly prevalent, knowing down power line poles between the Kansas Star Casino and Belle Plaine. Several places reported a large volume of hail including the community of Belle Plaine. Fair said winds reached 60 mph.

However, the damage was minimal. None of the emergency services nor Wellington City officials received any reports of damage.

As far as that wind funnel north of town, Fair said, he had a spotter north of the community.

“It would start organizing itself, fall apart, organize a stove pipe, fall apart,” Fair said. “It wasn’t a really strong storm system as far as establishing anything of consequence. I don’t think Wellington was ever in serious danger last night.”

He said once the storm connected with a jet stream east of town, it started to establish itself and build some momentum moving towards Oxford and Strothers Field, north of Arkansas City. He did not hear of any damage in that area either.

But it sure made for excitement for a while. Wellington was under a tornado warning for about 45 minutes, as storm clouds built up an amazing spectacle during the sunset hours between 8:30 and 9:15 p.m. There are some spectacular images on social media.

There was some moisture that came with the storm. Here were the reports from the weather stations at the Community Collaborative Rain, Hail and Snow Network website:

But outside a few tree limbs and a knocked over tricycle here and there, Wellington did just fine.

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(Sunday night) Sumner Newscow report — The tornado warning alert expired at 9:15 p.m. tonight for Wellington. But for 30 minutes the Wellington community was on edge.

Funnel cloud activity was spotted north of Wellington near the Worden Park area and the Wellington Christian Academy. As far as we know, no funnel cloud touched down in Sumner County but there was plenty of cloud activity. The picture above was taken at 1822 W. Edgewood Drive in west Wellington.

Below was a picture taken in the same area.

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