weather

Yes, it's going to be a warm weekend, but at 11 o'clock Saturday morning, you'll be treated to something special if you're at the Kansas City Zoo. Some of the zoo's penguins will be parading around the Helzberg Penguin Plaza, greeting guests.

"The birds actually seem to like it," says Director of Zoological Operations, Sean Putney."When we go in to get them, they don't quite smile, but when we walk toward the door, they follow us immediately." 

Tuesday promises to be a wild day for weather in and around the Kansas City metro. But breathless TV forecasts and an endless social media stream of predictions and warnings may have you confused. 

This graphic produced by the National Weather Service in Kansas City sums up neatly both when and where you should be looking for severe weather: 

An anticipated winter storm moved through the Kansas City metro Tuesday, bringing snow and ice in the early afternoon with the possibility of continuing snowfall throughout the evening commute.

Many schools and churches canceled evening activities or let students out early. Here is a list of those closures from The Kansas City Star.

This is not a dream. The Kansas City Royals are headed to the World Series for the second-straight year.

Kansas City eliminated the Toronto Blue Jays four games to two, after winning Game 6 by a score of 4-3 to take the American League pennant. The team will face the New York Mets for the Major League Baseball title.

The clinching win was anything but easy.

Excessive heat warnings hit the Kansas City area on Monday and Tuesday.

And forecasters predict dangerously high temperatures  at least through mid- week.

The elderly, infants and young children, those with dementia or other cognitive impairments, and those who work outside are among the most vulnerable to heat-related illness.

A line of storms moved through the Kansas City area early Monday evening, producing heavy rain and tornadoes.

The Clay Country Sherriff’s office reports a tornado touching down near the intersection of Interstate 35 and Highway 152 in Liberty.

A tornado also reportedly touched down in Eudora, Kansas, but in both cases, no injuries were reported.

Many intersections in the metro flooded after the thunder clouds quickly dumped several inches of rain. The Kansas City Fire Department reports high water downtown near Interstate 70 and 13th street.

Wall clouds were reported across the Kansas City metro Wednesday night, including some reports of rotation and even brief touch downs in eastern Jackson County and Cass County.

Trained spotters and residents reported a tornado in Lee's Summit and one in Pleasant Hill. There were reports of some damage, and as of 8:11 p.m., more than 10,000 Kansas City Power & Light customers were without power. 

Update, 8:04 a.m., Saturday

At the moment, Westar Energy isn't reporting any outages in Wyandotte or Johnson counties. Independence Power & Light reports 3,798 customers without power. The Kansas City Board of Public Utilities reports 9,873.

Kansas City Power & Light reports 22,447 outages in Jackson County and 2,333 in Johnson County.

Original post continues below

At around 2 a.m. on Friday, a storm with winds up to 80 mph rolled through the Kansas City metro area, taking down trees and power lines.

The Kansas City area was under flash flood warning Wednesday after a storm system dumped rain across the metro, flooding intersections, filling creeks and storm drains. Intersections on both sides of the state line also flooded as storm drains proved unable accommodate the deluge.

Pamela Murray from the National Weather Service says it wasn’t just the 3-5 inches of rain that fell, but how fast it fell.

“The ground's not able to soak in the water as fast as it’s coming down, so a lot of it runs off,” says Murray. 

As Mosby, Missouri, Police Sgt. Jason Lininger helped residents evacuate their Clay County homes Sunday morning, he asked Fishing River Fire how fast the water was rising.

"At one point, it actually rose four foot in one hour," Lininger told Gov. Jay Nixon during a briefing Monday afternoon.

Severe weather this weekend spawned 10 confirmed in Bates, Henry, Caldwell, Jackson, Ray, Newton, Lawrence and Polk counties. An unconfirmed tornado near Bethany leveled several grain elevators.

But the real problem was flash flooding.

Updated, 1:30 p.m.

According to an update on the KCP&L website: "We have restored nearly 90 percent of our affected customers. During the span of the storm, we had approximately 73,000 customers without power...Currently, we have approximately 6,500 customers remaining without power."

Our original post continues here:

Although there were no serious injuries reported in Monday night’s severe storms, rain and powerful wind gusts knocked out power for thousands across the Kansas City metropolitan area.