Although thunderstorms became fairly widespread across mainly western portions of this six-county North Central Kansas area on this Friday afternoon and evening, it turned out that the vast majority of severe weather in the region narrowly avoided the local area by focusing more-so over southern Nebraska and northwest/central Kansas. According to radar data and very limited ground-truth, the only severe storm to impact this portion of North Central Kansas initiated over far northeastern Phillips County between 5:00-5:30 p.m. CDT. It then expanded in size during the next 90 minutes, drifting slowly westward through the county before eventually weakening somewhat around 7 p.m. CDT as it merged with a larger storm complex near the Norton County line. Along the way, quarter size hail was reported 13 miles northeast of Phillipsburg. Despite a lack of ground-truth rainfall and flooding reports from northern Phillips County, radar estimated that at least 1.50-3.00��� drenched the area mainly between 6-9 p.m. CDT, likely resulting in minor flooding issues. However, this heavy rain swath was the exception within these six counties, as most of southern Phillips, western Smith, Rooks and Osborne counties received less than 1��� of rain, with almost none whatsoever falling in Jewell, Mitchell and eastern Smith.
Further examining the timing/evolution of convection within the local area, the aforementioned Phillips County severe storm was the first, semi-isolated storm of the day as it got underway between 5:00-5:30 p.m. CDT and started tracking west. Then between 6-8 p.m. CDT, a proliferation of outflow boundaries emanating from convection that initially developed in northwest and central Kansas resulted in a steady increase in storm coverage over Phillips and Rooks counties. During the following few hours, a north-south line of strong storms briefly organized over Osborne and western Smith counties but largely weakened by 10 p.m. CDT. Thereafter, only weak thunderstorm and widespread shower activity persisted within parts of the area into the very early morning hours of Saturday the 18th before dissipating and/or departing. This was a somewhat sneaky severe weather event considering that mid-upper level forcing and deep-layer wind shear were quite weak by mid-June standards (no more than 15-20 knots). However, this lack of forcing/shear was clearly compensated for by a potent level of instability/CAPE, climbing to at least 3000-4000 J/kg during the afternoon. These lofty instability values were not surprising considering that this was one of the hotter, more humid days of summer 2016 within North Central Kansas as temperatures generally topped out 99-102 F in the presence of dewpoints in the mid-60s. Because of this high instability/low shear setup, initially isolated multicell convection quickly became outflow-dominant, subsequently igniting increasingly-widespread storm development along a plethora of merging outflow boundaries. In the mid-upper levels, the weak flow and lack of large-scale forcing over the Central Plains was due to a broad ridge axis stretched from northern Mexico all the way into southeast Canada. At the surface, there were no pronounced boundaries of note over the local area as steady southeast breezes prevailed, although a somewhat subtle confluence zone was noted from central into northwest Kansas.

Hail in PHILLIPS, KANSAS
From 17-JUN-16 17:18:00 to 17-JUN-16 17:18:00 (CST-6)
Location: AGRA
Magnitude: 1.00 
Property damage: 0.00K
Crop damage: 0.00K
Reported by: Trained Spotter