BlockBefore

Willis, Kansas

17 topographic sheets cover this place, the earliest surveyed in 1888 and the latest in 1990. It stands in Mission Township. It lies in ZIP code area 66434. The Survey maps it on the Horton quadrangle. 24 people lived here at the 2020 count. It stands 1,161 feet above sea level.

Willis within Brown County

Population over time

2 figures

Willis fell from 38 to 24 between 2010 and 2020. These are the recorded population figures Wikidata holds for this place, reached through the Geographic Names Information System number this page is keyed on rather than by name, so they belong to this place and not to another of the same name. Most are census counts, but not all are: an early figure may be a founding or settlement estimate, and an estimate published within five years of a census is left out. The change column is computed, and is left blank where more than 20 years separate a figure from the one before it, because a gap that long is not a change between two counts.

YearPeople Change
201038
202024-14 (-37%)

Topographic sheets covering this place

9 surveys from 17 printed sheets

Matched by testing this settlement's coordinate against the published boundary of every sheet in the United States Geological Survey's historical collection. Each opens the scanned sheet at the Survey.

Fires near this place

28 since 2014

Regional context, not property-specific evidence. The federal wildfire occurrence database lists 28 fires within 5 miles of Willis between 2014 and 2020, burning about 557 acres in total. None started naturally. 1 was recorded as arson. Distance is straight-line from the map coordinates, so a fire counted here may appear on a neighbouring settlement's page as well.

Reported cause Fires
Missing data/not specified/undetermined14
Smoking7
Debris and open burning4
Misuse of fire by a minor1
Arson/incendiarism1
Equipment and vehicle use1

The most recent of them, most recent first, with the day each was reported and the service that recorded it.

DateCause SizeReported by Name on the report
28 June 2017Missing data/not specified/undetermined1.0 acresBrown County1738
5 April 2018Missing data/not specified/undetermined10 acresKansas Forest Service18016
1 April 2015Debris and open burning44 acresKansas Forest Service1500049
1 April 2015Missing data/not specified/undetermined21 acresKansas Forest Service1500047
8 March 2015Smoking27 acresKansas Forest Service1500028
7 March 2015Smoking35 acresKansas Forest Service1500027
23 March 2015Smoking36 acresKansas Forest Service1500043
22 March 2015Missing data/not specified/undetermined23 acresKansas Forest Service1500042

Settlements close enough to share some of these fires:

Every fire recorded in Brown County

Storms near this place

7 since 1998

Regional context, not property-specific evidence. The National Weather Service names Willis in 7 storm reports between 1998 and 2019: 3 hail, 2 thunderstorm wind, 2 tornado. No death or injury is recorded in these reports. Each account below is quoted exactly as the forecast office filed it, from the NOAA Storm Events Database, and each date opens the federal record of that event.

WhenEvent Place namedHarm What the report says
April 2006Tornado (F1)Willis$150,000At 5:44pm cst, an F1 tornado touched down 1 mile south of Willis and travelled 4 miles before dissipating 3 miles east of Willis at 5:49pm cst. Just east of Willis, 4 well built outbuildings were destroyed on a farmstead. Several other outbuildings and trees were damaged by the tornado. Along it's 75 yard wide path, it is estimated to have caused $150,000 in damage. The parent thunderstorm was a supercell.
June 1998HailWillis$3,000no account filed
June 1998Thunderstorm WindWillis$2,000no account filed
June 2014Tornado (EF1)Willis-A brief tornado touched down around 1124 pm CDT just east of Willis and moved to the southeast damaging two homes along a path lifting around 1 mile north of Everest at approximately 1130 pm CDT. Homes exhibited debris fields blown to the south and some debris was blown to the northwest. One home had 2 by 6 boards driven into the east side of the home. Rating was EF1 with winds to around 100 mph.
May 2019HailWillis-no account filed
September 2007HailWillis-no account filed
August 2005Thunderstorm WindWillis-no account filed

Every storm recorded in Brown County

Nearest settlements

The eight closest, with where each one stands in the county. Distances are straight-line, computed from the Geographic Names Information System coordinates.

Map PlaceDistance Sheets
Baker3.6 miles18
Horton4.6 miles17
Mercier5.2 miles17
Everest5.4 miles20
Powhattan7.1 miles17
Robinson8.1 miles20
Hiawatha8.9 miles18
Padonia14.0 miles17

Elsewhere

Matched on this settlement's Geographic Names Information System number rather than its name, so it cannot be a different place of the same name in another state.

Wikipedia article on WillisAn encyclopaedic summary. Its text is share-alike, so it is linked here rather than copied.
Wikidata item Q925273The structured record the population and elevation above come from. Public domain (CC0).

Provenance

This settlement is recorded in the Geographic Names Information System as feature 473248. The sheet list is computed by point-in-boundary test against the United States Geological Survey's historical topographic inventory. Both are works of the United States government and carry no copyright under 17 U.S.C. 105.

Wildfire. Short, Karen C. 2022. Spatial wildfire occurrence data for the United States, 1992-2020 [FPA_FOD_20221014]. 6th Edition. Fort Collins, CO: Forest Service Research Data Archive. https://doi.org/10.2737/RDS-2013-0009.6 Collected with United States Government funding and usable without additional permissions or fees.

Storms. NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information, Storm Events Database https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/stormevents/ A work of the United States government, no copyright under 17 U.S.C. 105. Narratives are quoted verbatim from the National Weather Service report and are not edited or summarised.