Power Outage in Loup City, NE

Wind gusts estimated near 60 mph resulted in tree damage and power outages in Loup City.

A few isolated storms developed in the late afternoon and early evening hours on this Saturday. The first storms formed in a southwest-northeast oriented line roughly from McCook to Broken Bow to O'Neill around 2 PM CST. Most of these storms were weak, not lasting long. The most potent and persistent storms affected portions of Greeley, Howard, and Sherman Counties. However, even these storms did not last long, only affecting these counties between 4 and 730 PM CST. These storms did exhibit some supercell characteristics as they drifted slowly south while all other storms to the southwest moved southeast with the mean wind. One of these storms dropped south through eastern Greeley County and was responsible for producing estimated winds of 60 to 70 mph, with downed power lines in one known location. Another storm formed over the southwest part of the County and produced hail the size of half dollars near Scotia. The last severe thunderstorm formed over northern Howard County. This storm propagated due south across the County, producing significant severe hail. Hail up to the size of baseballs was reported in Loup City. One observer indicated that hail lasted around 20 minutes on the north side of town where the largest hail was the size of ping pong balls.||During the early morning hours on the previous day, a weak cool front dropped south across Nebraska with its western edge banked up against the Rockies. A weak low tracked southeast down the stalled portion of the front from Montana, eventually forcing the front eastward as it moved into South Dakota during the morning on this Saturday. As the day progressed, the front and weak low dropped into western and central Nebraska. The flow aloft was moderately amplified with a subtropical high over the Intermountain West and a trough over the Appalachians. Northwest flow was over the Central Plains. Just prior to the storms moving in, temperatures were in the lower 90s with dewpoints in the upper 50s and lower 60s. Mid-level lapse rates were poor, resulting in MLCAPE between 1000 and 1900 J/kg. Effective deep layer shear was 30 to 35 kts with 0-3 km SRH around 100 m2/s2.