By Jeff Lehr
jlehr@joplinglobe.com
Thunderstorms that rolled across Kansas, Oklahoma and Missouri late Thursday night and early Friday did not pack the wallop that weather forecasters warned possible.
No tornadoes were reported in Southeast Kansas, Northeast Oklahoma or Southwest Missouri, the National Weather Service in Springfield said on Friday. Wind damage from the storms proved limited, according to area sheriff’s departments.
“The main wind damage we had was around Joplin, which wasn’t a whole lot,” said Doug Cramer, a meteorologist with the NWS bureau in Springfield.
There were two super-cell thunderstorms that passed through the region, Cramer said. One swept across Cherokee and Crawford counties in Kansas and into Barton County. Once it reached Missouri though, it started to take more of a cluster shape, Cramer said.
Another super-cell storm that moved through Northeast Oklahoma and into Newton and Jasper counties in Missouri seemed to have produced the most wind, downing tree limbs, particularly along Joplin’s south side.
Cramer said sharp lightning was present in both storms. Lightning and high winds were being blamed for two house fires in Joplin, a third house fire near Pittsburg, Kan., and a garage fire in Neosho.
Joplin firefighters were called at 12:30 a.m. Friday to a vacant, single-story house at 1209 Murphy Blvd. The house was in flames when they arrived, fire Chief Gary Trulson said.
“It had electrical service still hooked to it and it looked like it might have got blown off in the storm and been a contributing factor,” Trulson said.
A second house fire in Joplin at 7:02 a.m. Friday also was considered storm-related, Trulson said. A fire that began in the attic of a home at 931 S. Conner Ave. apparently smoldered overnight and went unnoticed until the morning, when a boy on a bicycle noticed smoke coming from its eaves and helped warn the occupants, he said.
“It appeared they had some type of surge last night,” Trulson said of that fire.
Other than the fires, Trulson said, Joplin’s storm damage appeared to be limited to limbs falling on vehicles.
The Crawford County Sheriff’s Department said a house at 1040 E. 320th Ave. near Pittsburg, Kan., caught fire from lightning at 2:19 a.m. Friday. The home belonging to Harvey and Judy Riches was fully engulfed in flames when Baker, Frontenac and Arma fire departments arrived.
No injuries from the fire were reported by the Sheriff’s Department.
Neosho fire Chief Greg Hickman said firefighters were called at 7:35 a.m. Friday to a garage fire at 1224 Peterson Road when light smoke was noticed coming from the structure’s attic. Hickman said lightning apparently had struck the garage’s breaker box.
The power to the detached garage was shut off and the fire extinguished, Hickman said.
Rain amounts from the storms varied considerably across the region. Cramer said there were several locations that received more than an inch. Others received very little rain, he said.
About an inch of rain was reported two miles west of Diamond, just a half inch five miles south of Carthage. The Joplin airport received two-tenths of an inch of rain.
“But I can guarantee you the south side of Joplin got a lot more than that,” Cramer said.
The forecast for the Joplin area this weekend is dominated by a warming trend, with temperatures expected to reach 85 today and about 87 on Sunday, he said. There’s a chance of “pop-up” thunderstorms in the region Sunday afternoon and continuing next week, he said.
Downed limbs
Joplin residents have three options for disposing of downed tree limbs, according to Joplin’s recycling coordinator.
They can be cut to lengths of 4 feet or less, bundled and left for regular trash pickup. Limbs of greater size can be delivered from 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. Monday through Thursday and on Saturdays to the Allied Waste Services transfer station on Old Route 66 in Galena, Kan. Professional tree-trimming and hauling services also may be hired.
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