Burst of sunshine delays ice storm in Wichita area

A few hours of sunshine in the Wichita area Saturday warmed temperatures well above freezing by early afternoon, pushing back the local arrival of the ice storm expected to grip most of Kansas this weekend.

“It’s going to show its hand here pretty soon,” National Weather Service meteorologist Ken Cook said early Saturday afternoon of the ice storm.

After all the media build-up about how bad the storm would be, Wichitans interviewed on Facebook Saturday had little to fret over.

“Getting tired of the weather people crying wolf because the models said it ‘could’ happen,” Steve Leonard wrote. “Unless something changes drastically tonight, they will have yet another time they cried wolf. It is all in the name of predicting more gloom than anyone else.”

“I’m getting ready to make cookies and potato soup,” Peggy Smith wrote.

“We didn’t even get the freezing drizzle last night in rural Cheney,” Jean Hogan wrote.

“You need to take a nap,” Karen Funcheon suggested.

“Just annoyed they moved the (Red Hot) Chili Peppers concert!!” wrote Stephanie Bally.

“Last night, at 8:30 p.m. my patio table top was a solid sheet of ice,” wrote Larry Gunkel.

“The thickest ice I see right now is in my ice maker,” wrote Sandy Swank.

And this, from Jim Mason, the naturalist who directs the Great Plains Nature Center: “Wait one more day.”

Indeed, meteorologists were still projecting that Wichita would receive accumulations of between a quarter- and a half-inch of ice by the time the precipitation transitions back to rain on Sunday.

“I still believe the ice storm will evolve as forecast except for a little more slowly,” Mike Smith, executive vice president of AccuWeather Enterprise Solutions, wrote on his blog Meteorological Musings.

Freezing rain was already falling across much of central Kansas on Saturday afternoon. An inch or more of ice accumulation was expected in a large swath of southwest Kansas, stretching from Liberal northwest to near Larned, including Dodge City.

Up to an inch of accumulation was forecast from western Reno County west to Garden City and north to northeast of Hays.

Travel in those areas was being discouraged, with officials urging residents to stay home until Monday morning if possible. Outages in some areas could last for days, weather officials said.

The opening round of the wintry precipitation struck Wichita during the evening rush hour Friday. Freezing rain glazed elevated stretches of streets and highways in particular.

More than 20 vehicles were involved in a pile-up downtown when a collision on the icy exit ramp from westbound Kellogg to the Central Business District triggered a chain reaction of collisions shortly after 6 p.m. Three minor injuries were reported in the pile-up, which snarled westbound Kellogg in the center of the city for hours.

A total of 65 collisions were reported in Sedgwick County in less than five hours Friday night, with nearly 40 more injuries reported, authorities said.

This story was originally published January 14, 2017 at 4:32 PM with the headline "Burst of sunshine delays ice storm in Wichita area."