Possible microbursts roll through the Metro Tuesday night

KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Severe storms moved through the Metro and most of the viewing area Tuesday night, packing heavy rain and a very significant amount of wind. In fact, we had observed wind gusts of 70-90 mph as storms ripped through Unity Village and Lee’s Summit. There were plenty of other problem areas around the Metro as well.

High wind created problems and outages in the Liberty area, as multiple damage reports came in around 7:50-8:15 PM Tuesday.

Previous reports came in farther west along I-635 near Riverside of overturned semi trucks, thanks to high wind accompanying storms.

These very localized high winds associated with thunderstorms are called microbursts.

Microbursts are very small areas in a thunderstorm where a strong push of rain-cooled air crashes into the ground and spreads out in all directions. When that cooler air crashes to the ground, the wind speeds can spike up for a few moments.

We can see evidence of these microbursts and downbursts on our Velocity pictures close to the radar.

Outside of the scattered microbursts Tuesday evening, additional widespread damaging wind was reported for a large section of our northeastern viewing area.

The storm threat for the rest of the night will go down, but rounds of non-severe heavy rain could cause flash flooding into very early Wednesday. A Flash Flood Warning has been posted until 2:30 AM for areas along 65 Highway northeast of KC.

More storms are expected Wednesday afternoon and Wednesday night, with another round of severe storms during portions of Thursday that could add to the water-logged soils around the Metro and pose another flooding threat.

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