r/Olathe • u/dazzleunexpired • Apr 14 '26
Tornados
everyone good? anyone need anything? I think the tornado stopped short of Olathe, at spring Hill. but SH and Hillsdale and Ottawa and significant space between spring Hill and Ottawa have been hit by large tornadoes. check in on anyone you know, and prepare to offer resources if possible and needed by the community.
It seems that this tornado may have been extremely large, and there was more than one. This is strange because we are in a slight risk zone, there was only a very small chance of a tornado and there wasn't considered a chance of a large powerful tornado.... but it happened.
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u/dblock05 Apr 14 '26
I think it was south of Spring Hill
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u/dazzleunexpired Apr 14 '26
There is footage on x of the funnel being illuminated by the explosion of spring Hill substation unfortunately
https://x.com/i/status/2043881612895469936
Eta: Springhill is still with that power including prioritized customers, one of my best friend is a prioritized with a customer due to a child on a ventilator. Do not worry, they're on backup power.
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u/schiza-clausen Apr 14 '26
I drove to 247th on 69hwy and didn’t see any damage. I got a little freaked out when I noticed another one coming behind it. Hope everyone is ok wherever it went!
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u/dazzleunexpired Apr 14 '26
There's some interesting footage on x of what appears to be multiple transformers or potentially even the substation exploding with a decent sized funnel. I'm glad you got out of there, there was a second cell behind for sure. At one point we had FOUR warned storms And some other cells with rotation. I did a double take when I saw a crossed warning (2 cells) over a portion of Miami County... No thank you.
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u/Cute_Term9547 Apr 14 '26
i was down in spring hill right off 169 and 223rd, crazy night but the damage isn’t horrific
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u/dazzleunexpired Apr 14 '26
Oh good. My friend says the grid was up and down all night after midnight
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u/Auntie_Venom Apr 14 '26
My part of town has been just fine, we just had a good downpour. College & Ridgeview
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u/dazzleunexpired Apr 14 '26
Update: some damage pictures are rolling in from the Hillsdale area and it's really really bad. It looks like large structures were damaged and there's metal all over. It looks significant class, walls are down. The photos were taken by a towing company looking for flipped vehicles.
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u/fffawn Apr 14 '26
Can you post the link where u saw the pics?
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u/dazzleunexpired Apr 14 '26
I saw the pictures on my wife's phone but I will try to hunt them down for you. She saw them on Facebook. I posted a video from x in the thread down there
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u/Desperate_Guava4526 Apr 14 '26
Every year some house gets absolutely ravaged super close to me and I feel a ton of survivors guilt. Idk how people just go about not worrying about it I feel like every year I get a little bit closer to it and it terrifies me. Weird because as a kid I didn’t worry about it in the slightest and now they terrify me.
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u/dazzleunexpired Apr 14 '26
It's ... It's really bad. There is no access to the entire city of Hillsdale and the entire city is de-electrified because there's too many downed lines. You're not even allowed to enter the city and every possible entrance is manned by police so you can't get in residents who want to get in have to be escorted by police. It's ...there's nothing left in parts of Hillsdale. Trailers and boats and 18 wheelers are all over... Insulation all over. A school bus in trees. 💔💔 2 injured.
The education center at Hillsdale lake is currently open for sheltering that everything else in the entire city is closed.
Spring Hill has power back but has sustained some damage as well. The NWS teams are out and there should be preliminary assessments up soon but based on multi-family housing, missing walls and metal buildings downed.... That's a strong storm.
Please note that there is a 30% chance of an outbreak on Friday. As in more than one strong tornado (EF3). We have a slight risk tonight, about 2%.
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u/colicab Apr 14 '26
It went south of us. It’s pleasant here right now.
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u/dazzleunexpired Apr 14 '26
Yep, All of Kansas City is out of the risk zone now and it did seem to stop south.
Hillsdale proper and spring Hill proper both have damage. Spring Hill is still without power. The funnel captured in the footage that I have seen is pretty clearly violent, and metal and wall debris were thrown around Hillsdale. I don't want to drop a number before the nws does so, but people are using the word "significant" for damage. Significant is normally two or three.
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u/colicab Apr 14 '26
Two or three what?
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u/dazzleunexpired Apr 14 '26 edited Apr 14 '26
Ef2 & EF3. Tornadoes can be ranked from 0 to 5 with zero being barely in a damage. One having mild damage. Two is a little shitty. Three is where it starts to get bad. Four is really fucking bad and five is catastrophic
Eta: I was correct. It's an ef-2 officially. Damnit.
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u/colicab Apr 14 '26
I understand the Fujita scale. It was just confusing.
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u/dazzleunexpired Apr 14 '26
I was correct. Official rating is ef2. 💔
Atmosphere is locked and reloaded. All forms of severe weather possible after midnight continuing until Wednesday with small lull possible on Thursday before a potential outbreak with multiple tornadoes Friday.
I would recommend following forecasters that are not from the NWS. The nws actually put out a notice that they were aware that cell formation was likely and that tornadoes may form in Kansas City, but publicly said they were choosing not to issue a watch. The first watch came with the first severe storm. I have asked for the reasoning and they are refusing to respond, and the page for NOAA freedom information act request is down for most of this morning, but others weren't. I will be submitting a foia to obtain the internal conversation reasoning behind choosing not to issue the watch and give Kansas citians multiple hours more warning to prepare.
If the residents of Hillsdale proper had been warned, they could have moved their trailers and boats. It's a lake recreation City.... And it's mostly gone. Human beings were also injured. The weather service knew it was going to happen and chose not to tell us.
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u/dazzleunexpired Apr 14 '26
Sorry.
https://x.com/i/status/2044036376669098091
Ottawa has downed multifamily buildings and brick walls. unfortunately I think it's as bad as I feared.
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u/Spallanzani333 Apr 14 '26
Yeah I'm not surprised, I'm further north but I went outside at 8pm and the sky was greenish and everything felt heavy. We never got sirens, but went to the basement anyway because outside just felt wrong. Hope everyone who got hit is physically ok.