It’s been an interesting summer to say the least for Adair & Guthrie County Emergency Management Coordinator Bob Kempf.

With Monday’s severe storm wreaking havoc in southern Guthrie and northern Adair County included, he’s now been right in the middle of two emergency response operations in the past month and a half.

Kempf says there really is no getting around a simple fact: it has been an unfortunately unprecedented severe weather season.

“We’re used to thunderstorms, a little bit of hail, things like that, but the weather patterns have been much more extreme right over our area basically for the past couple of years with the drought and then the extremely cold winter this winter.  It all just depends on where the jetstream is and what the atmosphere is doing, and it has affected us more than what it has in… I’d say several decades.”

Kempf is back in Guthrie Center now after helping to coordinate much of the recovery effort in Adair the past couple of days.  He says the bulk of initial clean-up in the town is complete.

Given the fact we still have a good amount of summer remaining, Kempf asks that residents be prepared in the event severe weather does strike again. We’ll have more with Kempf next week as he discusses the importance of developing an emergency plan.