Winds in Kansas Whip Up Wildfires and Dust Storms

U.S.|The winds successful Kansas are whipping up wildfires and particulate storms.

• Dec. 15, 2021, 8:37 p.m. ET

The aforesaid tempest strategy generating tornadoes successful the cardinal United States besides spawned precocious winds successful Kansas that were the origin of particulate storms and — by knocking implicit powerfulness lines — respective wildfires, the authorities said.

Winds reaching arsenic precocious arsenic 100 miles per hr generated fires passim the occidental and cardinal parts of the state, said Jane Welch, a spokeswoman for the state’s Division of Emergency Management. At slightest 1 location was destroyed, she said, but nary deaths oregon injuries were reported by Wednesday night.

Forecasters had said earlier that gusty winds, adust aerial and lukewarm temperatures would make conditions ripe for “an utmost to perchance catastrophic grassland fire.”

Eric Metzger, a meteorologist astatine the National Weather Service successful Wichita, said the biggest occurrence connected outer imagery is successful Russell and Ellsworth Counties successful cardinal Kansas, wherever 2 fires had “merged unneurotic into 1 monolithic fire.”

“It’s astir apt astir 40 miles long,” helium said, adding that the occurrence was moving eastward.

He said that earlier Wednesday, Kansas had not had immoderate rainfall for implicit a month. The authorities has seen fires successful December, erstwhile the upwind gets dry, but this felt different.

“I’ve lived retired present for much than 20 years,” helium added. “This is historical for us.”

He said the aforesaid tempest strategy that generated rainfall and tornadoes could besides whip up fires due to the fact that the Gulf of Mexico had blocked moisture from moving north.

Ms. Welch said the winds were truthful beardown connected Wednesday nighttime that it was excessively unsafe for exigency crews to combat the fires from the air. The fume had already gotten truthful atrocious that it could beryllium detected up north successful Nebraska, the National Weather Service determination said.

In summation to the fires, which prompted several evacuation orders, precocious winds person blown implicit eighteen-wheelers and particulate storms person whipped done the state, hindering visibility, Ms. Welch said.

“It’s a small brainsick successful Kansas today,” she said.