By MIKE CORN

mcorn@dailynews.net

A series of brief, small tornadoes swept through far northwest Kansas on Sunday evening, sending residents to their basements but causing little damage.

Straight-line winds, however, caused other problems, including the downing of several power lines, tripping a breaker that shut off power to the city of Oakley for about 20 minutes.

Only about 60 customers of Midwest Energy remain without power this morning, but spokesman Bob Helm said they mostly are irrigation wells and center pivots.

The outages were reported in the Colby and Oakley areas.

Four tornadoes were reported to the Goodland National Weather Service, a spokeswoman said, but no damage has been reported. She did say the power lines were toppled as a result of the straight-line winds.

Hail was reported throughout the area, with the largest report measuring 13âÑ4 inches in diameter.

The first tornado was reported shortly after 6 p.m., southeast of Brewster.

The three remaining tornadoes came within a 25-minute time span, in the Ruleton area west of Goodland, 9 miles northeast of Goodland and 14 miles north of Edson.

Two of the tornadoes could be seen from the National Weather Service office, the spokeswoman said.

The strongest wind gust came from the residence of a NWS employee, measured at 77 mph at 9:20 p.m. Mountain time. He promptly either lost power or Internet as his weather station went offline.

"That's the highest wind we had," she said.

Storms could redevelop later this afternoon, but are expected to be more isolated.

The strongest storms are being forecast for Nebraska and the Dakotas.

"We're on the southern end of it," she said.