- Coming up next on IGI, we discuss two potential springtime threats in northeast Kansas, severe weather and wildfires.

We also provide tips on how to prepare for those hazards and possibly minimize the threats they pose.

Stay with us.

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Thank you.

- Welcome to I've Got Issues.

I'm your host LA Tiffany OBA Spring has finally arrived and along with warmer temperatures, spring heralds the return of a couple of threats that are all too familiar to the residents of Northeast Kansas, severe weather and wildfires.

Joining us today to discuss those hazards are Sarah Teefey Meteorologist for the National Weather Service Forecast Office here in Topeka, Dusty Nichols, Director of the Shawnee County Department of Emergency Management, and Eric Ward, assistant Fire Management Officer with the Kansas Forest Service.

Welcome to, I've Got issues and I'm really excited to talk with you guys today about severe weather planning and wildfires.

So Sarah, I wanna start with you.

Let's talk about severe weather and what it was like in 2024.

- So last year was a little more active than the previous years were across the state of Kansas we had 76 tornadoes.

Our average for the last 30 years is about 81.

So we were a little bit below average, but that was the highest number since 2019.

Also interesting to note, our office in Topeka issued over 300 severe thunderstorm warnings for northeast Kansas, which was the most since 1984.

And that's I think when records began for a number of severe thunderstorm warnings.

So we had softball size hail at times.

We had numerous reports of 70 to 90 mile per hour wind gusts along with those tornadoes.

So certainly a more active season than what we had seen the previous years.

- Oh wow.

I wanna talk with you about, you mentioned hail and you mentioned tornadoes.

Some of those things are things that people traditionally think about.

Are there any other things that people should be thinking about when you hear the words severe weather?

- Sure, yeah, of course.

Tornadoes, the large hail damaging straight line winds, microburst type of winds.

Oftentimes the, the tornado warnings get the most attention, but the severe thunderstorm warnings when we have wind and hail in there can also be very dangerous and can also do a lot of damage.

So those things as well.

Flooding, flash flooding is certainly a hazard as well.

And then when it comes to severe weather, you know the, the extremes which we get in northeast Kansas, the really cold and the really hot, which we have to start thinking about soon too.

- Okay.

I'm gonna come back and talk to you about how we can stay aware of those severe weathers.

But I wanna turn and talk about wildfires.

So what exactly is a wildfire?

- We basically define a wildfire as any fire and burning vegetation.

So whether it's grass brush, forest crop land, if it's vegetation burning that's not supposed to be, we would consider that to be a wildfire.

- Okay.

And I know a lot of people might have wildfires on their mind because of what happened in California this year, but what was it like in 2024 for wildfires for northeast Kansas - Last year was actually slightly below average in terms of the number of, of really bad fires.

That doesn't mean there still weren't a lot because every year there's quite a few fire departments.

Were pretty busy.

We just didn't have a lot of really big destructive ones last year compared to average.

I wouldn't count on that continuing to be the case this spring though.

- Okay.

Well Dusty, how can we stay weather aware for the severe weather and some of these things going - On?

Sure.

One of the things we've been really focused on over the past couple years is what are people listening to and what are they doing?

We know that there's satellite radio and there's MP3s and games and streaming and all these other things that people are not really as paying attention to the local weather conditions as they were in the past.

So we've always promoted getting weather service, radios, all hazards, weather radios and having a way to stay connected, whether it's a weather app or somebody calling you on the phone to say, Hey, pay attention to the weather.

So as we've gone through just, you know, just through time we see people paying less and less attention to what's really local and, and that concerns us to specifically to be in tune with the dangers that are that surround your neighborhoods or your house or your region or your workplace, wherever you live and play.

We want people to increase their situational awareness and that's being aware through local media or local assets somehow.

- Okay.

How can we be aware, so we know there's apps and things to be aware for severe weather and we've got those radios, but how can we be aware for wildfires?

- Well a lot of those same sources will provide fire information if there's, if the National Weather Service issues a fire weather watch or a red flag warning, most of those weather apps, a lot of the local government apps that a lot of the cities and counties provide, we'll usually share that information.

You can also on the weather services website, see the daily fire weather forecast that we'll discuss what's coming and give some highlights.

Real simple answer, if it's gonna be windy, there's gonna be fire danger.

If it's not raining this time of year, even if it rained last night, if it's windy today, that grass is dead right now and until it turns green that dead grass is not using that moisture in the soil.

So even if it rained last night and half of this morning, if it's turning windy this afternoon, you can pretty much assume fire danger's gonna be pretty high.

- Okay.

And we're gonna talk about how we're gonna plan in a moment, but I know we mentioned that hand radio and people not having like up to date apps.

Are there other ways for people to get information about severe weather and flash flooding that might happen?

- Are those, those ways are great ways to get information?

There's a lot of ways these days to get information with the technology that we have.

We just really push that people stay aware of whether ahead of time, you know, we can typically tell several days in advance when we're gonna have some kind of hazardous weather and we will start pushing that messaging.

Our website, whether.gov/toop is a great place to go.

We have a wide range of information there that you can look at to just have an idea of what might be coming up in, in three days, two days, you know, maybe tomorrow.

And then even short term, if we have some kind of hazardous headline like fire weather watch or red flag warning or severe thunderstorm watch, you're gonna see all of that there as well.

- Okay.

So now I wanna kind of talk about how we're gonna plan.

Sure.

Should people have a plan and if they do, what should be in it?

Who should be included?

Do we get to talk about our pets in those plans?

- Absolutely.

Pets are part of the family, so you gotta think about that.

We like to kind of think of a planning, if you're planning a trip across country, if you're going from here to California and you look at all those stops along the way, you're looking at gas stations or rest stops or restaurants or, or sightseeing, same kind of thing.

You wanna plan through an emergency.

So if, if you take those things that could happen, Sarah discussed the flooding, the, the windstorms, even the wildfires.

If this can happen here and they can northeast Kansas, all of those can, how do you plan through those?

How do we get to the other side?

So set that goal that goes into communications.

So you have to be able to communicate with your family.

Again, you're gonna have those same problems that we have reaching people all of a sudden here if they're streaming, if they're not paying attention to the phone or whatever else.

Yeah.

So you have to have a communications plan to be able to, to discuss what's happening, where are you gonna meet up potentially, those kinds of things.

The other thing to consider is what do you need?

What is critical to you?

Do you have medications?

Do you have pets that you have to, are you responsible for somebody either really young or older generation that you're taking care of or somewhere in between where, where can you meet them halfway or where can you meet them at all to make sure that they're safe or get 'em to a basement or get 'em to a higher ground or whatever the situation might be.

Planning those things and understanding the threats that you're dealing with is the very first step.

And then communicating those and what you're gonna do is the next part and all those plans are gonna be different.

- Okay, we're gonna talk about that next part in a minute.

- Sure.

- So I kind of wanna switch and figure out for wildfires, can I just call 9 1 1 or how do I plan for that?

- That's a great question because we're so used to in modern society that if you need help you call 9 1 1 and it's gonna come.

And the fact is almost all the time that's gonna be true.

If there's a grass fire out back, you called 9 1 1, somebody's gonna show up and put it out.

If there's a major wildfire going on, that may not work because if you have a major fire, say threatening a community, you may have 50, a hundred or more homes at risk.

And I don't know if there's a county in Kansas that can put 50 fire trucks on a fire in the first 20 or 30 minutes.

So you have to plan ahead, have a plan, look at your property, see what's gonna catch fire around here.

If your home can survive without the fire department, you're gonna have a much, much better chance of a good outcome.

If it's a major fire, you just can't count on the fact that there's gonna be a fire truck parked out front.

So having non-combustible roofing and siding materials, making sure that any vents are covered so that embers can't blow in.

Usually if a house or a building catches on fire in a wildfire, it's not that this huge wall of flames in engulfs it.

It's all those little blowing embers that are blowing in the wind ahead of the fire and look at where the leaves gather.

When the leaves blow around your house, where do those gather?

That's the same place that the embers are gonna gather in a fire.

And so making sure that there's not trash or firewood piles or stuffed patio furniture, that kind of thing that could catch those embers and catch fire.

Making sure your gutters are cleaned out.

So that's a really easy place for an ember to blow in and just sit there for maybe hours.

The fire's over, the fire department's gone home and that ember's still up there smoking and in the middle of the night your house is on fire.

So having those things ahead of time greatly, greatly and proves the likelihood that after that fire's over, you're still gonna have a place to go home to.

- Okay.

And I, I know before we were talking and it was mentioned that when you're looking at those California wildfires, some of the houses were still standing after the wildfire happened.

And so is it because of some of this preparedness and looking outside the house that some houses are able to be able to withstand and still be there?

- That undoubtedly plays a role in it.

And again, it's not that wall of flame coming through the neighborhood consuming stuff or those houses would be gone.

You look at a lot of those pictures, the trees and the shrubs are still there.

It was basically one house, lighting the next house, lighting the next house.

And if you can prevent those embers from getting into your home, you've gone a long ways towards preventing your house from burning.

- Okay.

Sarah, do you have any resources that people can use as they're trying to figure out what kind of plan they wanna create for the severe weather?

I know sometimes in the moment you can get a severe weather alert or something, but we're not always gonna get those.

So what kind of resources can people use to plan?

- You know, if you're not sure how to plan, you can certainly Google something like that.

You know, what type of plans should you have for certain kinds of weather conditions.

We also go around this time of the year to all of our counties and we, we put on about severe weather, about planning, about awareness.

You know, we're always happy to answer questions as well.

You can get ahold of us through the phone, email, social media, you know, we've got a Facebook account, we've got a Twitter account.

So certainly some resources out there that are available if you're able to get onto the internet or, or give us a call like I said.

And we can certainly help point you in the right direction when it comes to how you need to plan, what you need to have on hand, how you need to find the information that you need ahead of time.

We can certainly help with that.

- Okay.

And so Dusty was saying one of the things that I'm gonna go back and talk to him about is communicating that plan.

So should the first time people be looking for these resources be when it happens when they're in the severe weather?

- No, you know, the first week of March we did severe weather awareness week and tried to push out that messaging.

That's a good time to start planning for the severe weather season because it can start to happen very quickly.

Last March we had some very active weather with tornadoes and that very large hail that happened last March.

So it's better to have a plan in place ahead of time before those warnings start to get issued so that you're not scrambling and get the whole family involved.

It's really important that that kids and families also know what the plan is that can help them too with the jitters and practice ahead of time.

We certainly tell people to practice.

I believe it's every Monday we hear sirens being tested.

It's a good time to maybe practice a tornado plan while the sirens are going off so you know what to do, but certainly better to be prepared ahead of time.

- Yes, yes.

Okay.

So we've heard about putting this plan together, we've heard about communicating it.

What should go into those plans?

So what does that look like?

You hear the siren, you decide, I've got my plan, I've got my tools, I wanna practice.

What does that look like?

- I, I think Sarah's spot on, no plan is complete until you've practiced it.

You have to run through it prior to an event 'cause that's when things are calm.

You don't want to try this when, when a real thing's happening.

So practice, practice, practice.

So develop your plan and, and using the resources, national Weather Service or on the fire websites or even www.ready.gov, they have templates you can use.

And we're talking about insurance and I mean taking pictures of all your stuff and getting all those things done and ready and then talk to your family, communicate what you're gonna do and then practice that plan.

And that could be just at this time we're gonna do this or mom or dad saying go and we're gonna do it.

And understanding what you need to do and the repetition that muscle memory takes the fear out of it.

The fear of the unknown.

Yeah, there's something gonna happen but if you know what you're going to do, the calmer you can do it and the more focused you become and that repetition of that exercise, what we call a drill or an exercise that helps when the real thing happens.

'cause you hear the siren or you hear the weather radio or you hear mom or dad say, go downstairs, you get your stuff and you go, yeah.

- So - Thinking through those things together as a family or a unit or even individually, knowing what you're gonna do before it happens is really crucial on, on a lot of things.

That's part of the mitigation piece of this.

And that's knowing what to do.

Even if you're going shopping on a high threat day, where am I gonna, if I'm at, if I'm at this store, do they have a shelter for me?

- Yeah.

Yeah.

- So having a plan is much more than just, we're gonna do this when this happens.

It's critically thinking each step of the way, if this happens, this is what I'm going to do.

And, and connecting those dots when it, when it's time.

- Okay.

So one of the things we were talking about is tornadoes and tornado sirens.

Is there something, maybe somebody who's in an apartment should consider over somebody who's maybe in a house when they're hearing weather warnings?

Yep.

Or they're hearing - Sirens.

You are.

It's one of the phone calls we get and I'm sure we get 'em from the National Weather Service too.

'cause they forward 'em to us too.

We, we work back and forth together.

A lot of people are transient, have moved here recently from a non tornado state.

Whether it's, they're not familiar with it or they're scared of it or whatever their situation is, they live in an apartment or they don't have a basement in their house or a place to go.

This is exactly why we plan ahead.

This is exactly what I was just talking about.

Knowing what you're gonna do.

When the National Weather Service says it's a, it's a high severe weather probability day, then you start thinking, where am I gonna go?

Do you have a neighbor?

Do you have a, you know, you can go over to their basement with them and you know, bring a treats or a dessert or something along those lines, You know, and, and just be safe and feel safe.

And in apartments, knowing where those things are prior to the event, again, knowing what you're going to do before the event occurs.

And that's first step is knowing the hazards that you have to deal with.

And we have hazards, again, tornadoes, thunderstorms, lightning, floods, high winds, you name it.

All those things are here.

So think about those things again critically, think about what you're going to do before it happens.

And then when the, when the alarm goes, you have to have a way to get the alert.

- Yeah, - That's critical.

We've had a couple things over the past couple years where people don't have a way to get the, the notification have multiple ways.

Don't rely on a cell phone, batteries die, transformers go out.

All, there's lots of things that can go wrong.

Having backup plans is also a very important part of your planning.

- Okay.

I wanna turn our attention back to wildfires.

So you were talking about clearing out gutters, you were talking about maybe looking to see where debris collects.

What kind of role does that land management play in preparing and planning for wildfires?

Just in case the fire department doesn't get to you?

- I, I think that makes the difference of having a house and not having a house potentially.

You know, like I mentioned, on a normal day if there's a fire coming, the fire department's probably gonna get there and put it out and you'll probably be fine.

But if it's one of those really big ones, which can happen anywhere, we've seen 'em around Kansas and around the country.

If you are the one that the fire department can't get to, whether you did that preparation or not is very likely gonna be the difference between having a place to go home to at the end of the day and not having, - You know, when we were talking earlier, I mentioned the California wildfires and that looks a lot different than northeast Kansas.

So who's really at risk here when we're thinking about wildfires, - I'd, I'd say anybody that lives anywhere near vegetation, it's easy to think that, oh that's just a rural issue.

You know, we know grass fires are very, very, very common in northeastern Kansas in the spring and that's just a thing that happens out in the country.

But a lot of the worst fires, the Los Angeles fire started as a wildfire, but as soon as it hit the structures it was burning.

Building to building Topeka is, you know, a big city, but there's plenty of places in town that vegetation could catch fire at a park or even in your neighbor's backyard.

And a wildfire doesn't have to be huge to be devastating.

If it can be a few acres at the edge of a city park or like I say an overgrown neighbor's yard or whatever.

And if your house is the one that burns, you really don't care whether it was one house or 10,000.

It's tragic if you're the one that loses it.

So it, it's really a concern for everybody and needs to be taken seriously.

- Yeah.

Sarah, I wanna turn our attention to thunderstorms.

So when everybody thinks of thunderstorms, you immediately think of the rain, maybe you're thinking about of the water and the flash flooding, which we can talk about in a little bit.

But I wanna talk about lightning.

We were talking about that earlier.

Why does the lightning concern you?

- A lot of people are out when the weather's warm.

We have baseball games, it's summer, you know, maybe you work outside, maybe you're just outside enjoying the nice weather and lightning can happen quickly.

You know, those thunderstorm clouds can build so fast sometimes.

And we always like to tell people that it's the first strike that's typically the deadliest because if after that happens that people then take cover.

But oftentimes you see people waiting too long, you're outside on the golf course, the soccer field baseball course and, and light and lightning can happen.

So it's tricky.

But you keep an eye on the sky, you know, watch, watch the clouds, know whether or not there's a chance of storms that day.

Maybe have a radar app on your phone can be very helpful to kind of keep an eye on things and take shelter before hopefully that first strike happens.

But that's, that's why the first strike can be the deadliest.

- Okay, so Dusty Sarah mentioned taking shelter.

Sometimes when you're out, you're at the golf and you're experiencing that severe weather, there's not a lot of places to go, right?

So when you're thinking about taking shelter or planning in that sense, what should folks who are watching you thinking about, - There's a couple things with this.

Depending on what the event is outside ho hopefully if you have a large event, event coordinators have assigned a weather officer to keep an eye on the weather for everybody and they've have some kind of plan, whether it's PA systems or or working with a local emergency management to get the word out somehow should something happen.

So that's the first part.

The other part is there is an element of personal responsibility always.

So we could set up all kinds of safety things and, and have 'em ready for, for use.

But if you don't move from point A to point B, it's, it's on you.

So you have to have an element of personal responsibility, whether it's a, a phone app or knowing where to go or making that plan and just being educated to know that you know, for instance, lightning can strike 10 miles away from 10 miles away.

- Yeah.

- That's happened.

These are things now whatever level of risk you're willing to take, again, that's your personal responsibility.

- Yeah, - But move, that's all I can say.

If you know the threat is there, it's better to be safe than sorry.

- Okay.

Sarah, I wanna talk with you about flash flooding.

What is flash flooding and how can we kind of prepare for that?

A lot of times I think it happens on the highway.

Sure.

- Yeah.

And so we'll have oftentimes have strong thunderstorms that will produce heavy rain in a quick amount of time.

And that can cause flooding, that can cause that water to come up on the roads or the creeks and the streams very quickly and that can get over the roads.

And a lot of people think, well that's not very deep.

Maybe I can drive through that.

But flooding poses a lot of danger and I think it's just easy to underestimate the power of water.

You know, it doesn't take much if you drive into that water, it doesn't take a lot to, to cause you to lose control of your vehicle to cause that vehicle to become buoyant.

And then if there's some kind of of flow or current to that water, you're going to go with it.

And so what a lot of people don't realize is that yes, tornadoes are very dangerous, but in the last 10 years we've had one fatality associated with tornadoes in the state of Kansas.

One associated with lightning and seven associated with flash flooding.

Oftentimes that does happen in a vehicle.

A lot of times it's at night when that danger's harder to see.

So again, just being aware, we do issue flash flood warnings, we issue flood watches sometimes ahead of time when we think there could be a lot of flooding when we're expecting that heavy rain.

But sometimes it just takes one thunderstorm in one little area to produce enough rain to make that water come up.

So stay aware of your surroundings, you know, use your best judgment, turn around, try not to drive through water over roadways if you do not know how deep that is.

- So sometimes when you're in those weathers, sometimes people are sitting under the bridge or they're just on the side of the road.

Are those safe things to be doing in that kind of weather?

Oh, it's tricky as it's happening.

- It's tricky, yes.

If you're in a vehicle and you're dealing with a strong thunderstorm, knowing what to do or where to go.

If it's raining very heavy and that water's starting to pool on the roads and you can't see very well, a lot of people's instinct is to pull over, you know, to, to stop.

And sometimes yes, that's okay, but other times people are coming and they can't see you.

So of course reducing speed and, and just doing what you need to do based on the situation that you're dealing with at that time.

Ideally, if you can get off the road, you know, off, off the highway onto an exit ramp and onto a side road or, or to a a, a shelter or a store of some sort and and wait for that heavy rain to pass, that would be ideal.

- Okay.

Now Eric, going back to wildfires, what does someone do if they find themselves in the path of a wildfire?

- Best thing at that point would be to get out of the way.

It's hard to take shelter from a wildfire.

We don't have wildfire shelters around the country, but move away from it if you can move across the wind.

'cause depending on the wind speed in the light fuels in Kansas, a fire can move the speed of the wind.

So if it's 50 mile an hour wind pushing it and you can't drive 50 miles an hour, it's gonna be tough to outrun it.

But if you can go crossways and get away from it, a fast moving fire is usually a pretty narrow event.

And so just moving a quarter mile may get you completely outta the path of that fire.

Whereas you might drive five miles ahead of, and it's gonna keep up with you the whole time.

- Okay.

Dusty, starting with you, what's a piece of new technology or a resource that someone can use who's watching today to help them with their preparedness?

- I don't know if there's so much anything new necessarily, but the enhancements made to some of the stuff that's already been out there.

Again, we've, we've talked about the, you know, people on streaming devices, stuff like that.

Having those apps on multiple devices, that's, that's pretty key.

But those, those devices are along with the National Oil of Service and other agencies, we can get the warning out earlier.

Okay.

And that's kind of the enhancements that we've been able to do with the, the technology.

Even with our siren system, we now are pretty comfortable with when the National Oil Service puts up a polygon, we can sound a siren just within the warned area.

And so we are looking at changing our policies because of that enhancement and the technology going forward.

So as we look at that, we need also need to keep people informed.

So that's the key part of all of this is people have to have a way to get the information.

So that, that's, to me, that's the most important part.

If, yes, you have to have a plan and all those things, but if you can't get the information you're already behind and that's, that's not good.

- Eric, what about you?

- I, I think Dusty pretty well's covered it.

Having a way to get that information, have a weather radio, have an app sign up for the services provided by your local county law enforcement or emergency management agency that puts those alerts out.

Pay attention to the weather service.

You're gonna know much as anybody then.

- And Sarah, anything to add?

Any new apps or - Anything?

I would completely agree with what they're saying.

Lots of apps out there.

Do your research, find one that's gonna work for you.

- And would you agree it's probably good to have a backup and not rely just on one source?

Absolutely.

Yes.

Alright.

Well thank you guys so much for being with us today.

Thank you.

That's all the time we have for this episode of IGI.

If you have any comments or suggestions for future topics, send us an email at issues@ktwu.org.

If you would like to view this program again or any previous episodes of igi, visit us online at watch.ktwu.org.

I am LeTiffany Obozele and thank you so much for watching IGI today.

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