May 10th large hail & tornadoes

Around 3 pm on Saturday afternoon thunderstorms erupted over Sumner county in South Central Kansas along the cold front as it moved southeast through the area. These thunderstorms quickly turned severe producing large hail and a couple funnel clouds before it moved out of Wichita's county warning area.

Radar image showing the supercells as they began and moved over Cowley county at 3:45pm.

These storms produced multiple reports of golf ball sized hail and a few reports of tennis ball sized hail as they moved east rapidly into Elk and Chautauqua Counties.

Golf ball sized hail near Sedan in Chautauqua County. Photo courtesy of Bryce Kintigh

The image below shows the storms about 5 pm where they packed a punch with 70 mph winds measured at the Parson's Tri City Airport in addition to the quarter to golf ball sized hail.

As the storms were exiting Labette County around 5:15pm, two of the supercells near Oswego and Chetopa, Kansas produced funnel clouds.

Radar image at 5:15pm of two of the supercells, one near Oswego, KS and the second near Chetopa, KS. Both storms produced funnel clouds that produced tornadoes as they moved into Cherokee county Kansas and Ottawa County Oklahoma respectively.

Wall cloud with funnel as the storm tracked over Southeast Labette County. Photo courtesy of Pascal Van Schijndel

Just as the storms were exiting the area, the funnel cloud touched down along the state line and moved into Oklahoma. As the southern supercell continued to move across extreme Northeastern Oklahoma the tornado that touched down south of Chetopa increased in size and moved through Picher, Oklahoma where it caused severe damage and unfortunately fatalities. The northern supercell, near Oswego, KS, that had a funnel cloud produced a tornado as it crossed over into Cherokee county. This storm system continued to produce deadly tornadoes as it moved across Southern Missouri, Northeast Oklahoma and into Arkansas.