‘Hell of a storm’ leads to no reported damage

Holyoke residents found themselves beset by flying debris and tumbleweeds 11:30 a.m. Friday when a dust storm rolled into town. While Phillips County didn’t record its effects, the National Weather Service warned of a visibility drop to about a quarter mile and wind gusts of up to 60 miles per hour.

Despite its severity, the storm left by 5 p.m. that day with little impact.

“We were out and about, looking around, but there were no calls for service, no accidents, no trees down, nothing,” Phillips County Undersheriff Michael Beard said. “It was a hell of a storm, but it was smooth for us.”

The storm’s one significant effect, it seems, was it led to the cancellation of basketball games between the Holyoke High School Dragons and St. Francis Community High School Indians. 

Twenty minutes before the Indians were set to leave, Principal David Morrow and Superintendent Mark Penka of the St. Francis, Kansas-based school drove west on the route the team’s bus had been set to travel. Even in a pickup, Morrow said, the drive felt potentially hazardous.

“We absolutely regretted having to postpone the game,” he said. “We’re hoping to find a reschedule date, which is what we normally do, but we just refuse to put kids or parents on the road when the weather conditions are unsafe.”

His first year as principal nearly a decade previous, Morrow remembered the junior high boys traveling through a similar storm to a boys basketball tournament in Hoxie, Kansas. En route, they passed a multiple-fatality accident.

“Needless to say,” he said, “the PR fallout from that was not pleasant.”

Other games cancelled by the storm include a wrestling match between Atwood, Kansas and Burlington, Colorado; and a basketball game between Atwood and Oberlin, Kansas.