Looking back: Storms brought record rains that swamped area

But the monster storm system had devastating consequences in early May for many communities including Greensburg, which was wiped out by one of the most powerful tornadoes in Kansas history, to Topeka, which saw several houses damaged from flooding along the normally placid Shunganunga Creek.

The same storm system dumped record amounts of rain in the Ottawa area, causing flooding along the Marais des Cygnes River. The river reached flood stage a year ago today.

The city closed the flood gates at the Marais des Cygnes bridge on Main Street for the first time in several years.

Rural areas of the county were flooded, damaging crops and scouring away several county roads in the southern and western part of the county.

Although everyone remembers Greensburg, many people tend to forget the storm system that spawned it created more havoc throughout the Great Plains, Alan Radcliffe, Franklin County emergency management director, said.

A National Weather Service map of the system showed a colossal clump, most of it splotched with bright red — in weather terms, bright red isn’t good at all, stretching from Alberta in Canada to Texas.

The system, powered by a strong low-pressure center, stalled over the central U.S., pummeling the same areas over and over again with tornadoes, snow and rain, a process the Weather Service politely calls “training.”

More like hit by a train.

The system spawned more than 120 tornadoes, most of them powerful and most of them in Kansas. Thirteen people were killed by tornadoes during three days.

The storm dumped nearly a foot of rain or snow in many areas ranging from Alberta and the Dakotas to Colorado and Oklahoma.

At Ottawa, the Marais des Cygnes crested at nearly Marais des Cygnes River peaked at nearly 37 feet, about six feet above flood stage. At one point the river was boiling over the Main Street bridge downtown.

But for the most part, Franklin County escaped relatively unscathed compared to other areas, Radcliffe said.

The county was hit much harder by the flooding that occurred along the Marais des Cygnes and Pottawatomie Creek in late June and early July, he said.

Last year saw a series of record storms in 2007, beginning with a huge blizzard that struck western Kansas early in the year.

By the end of the year, every county in the state had been part of at least one of four federal disaster declarations.

“Four presidential declarations in a year was very unusual,” Radcliffe said. “I hope we don’t see that this year.”