NWS Topeka News Release

NWS Topeka is canceling the scheduled tornado drill for their service area due to expected impacts from the long duration high winds and wet snow overnight into Weds morning.   We expect much of northeast Kansas to endure a prolonged period of damaging wind gusts of 55 to 70 mph tonight.  There will also be an area of heavy wet snow that will fall across parts of northeast Kansas which could exacerbate any impacts of the wind gusts on power lines, tree limbs, etc.

The wind gusts will persist into tomorrow morning and given that there could be power outages due to the winds and wet snow we have decided to cancel the test that was scheduled for tomorrow at 10am CT.   We are not going to try and reschedule and encourage any schools and businesses to follow your exercise plan and hold a tornado drill over the next several weeks.

Just to be clear other NWS offices outside our service area may still hold their drills since the weather may be less severe in their respective areas so this pertains only to those counties that fall within the service area map below. 

For those of you outside of the counties highlighted below you can reach out to your respective NWS office contact by going to https://www.weather.gov/stormready/ks-cwa to find out what their plans are for tomorrow.