Power Outage in Gibbon, NE

Mainly between 3:30-6:30 p.m. CDT on this Saturday afternoon, a relatively narrow, southwest-northeast swath of South Central Nebraska experienced severe thunderstorms featuring several reports of damaging winds up to around 70 MPH and hail up to ping pong ball size. The vast majority of local severe activity unfolded within 10 miles either side of a line extending from Elwood-Overton-Ravenna-St. Paul-Wolbach. Within this corridor, the most notable wind damage occurred within and very near Howard County, as places extending from just east of Farwell and through the St. Paul, Elba and Wolbach areas experienced winds estimated to at least 65-70 MPH, causing fairly extensive tree damage and also taking down some irrigation pivots and power lines. Outside of this main area of damaging wind (and earlier in the event), the highest unofficial mesonet-measured wind gust of 60 MPH occurred in Elm Creek. Also outside the main severe wind zone (and a bit later in the evening) a rogue, briefly severe storm that flared up behind the main activity blew down a large tree in a neighborhood along the Platte River near Central City. As for hail, the largest reported stones to ping pong ball size occurred between Lexington and Overton (including at the Overton golf course) and also in rural northwestern Buffalo County. ||Breaking down event evolution/timing, this was a fairly classic setup for high-based severe storms, largely driven by a combination of intense heating and decent low level convergence along a well-defined summer cold front gradually tracking across Nebraska from northwest-to-southeast. Storms first ignited just southwest of the local area (near McCook) shortly before 3 p.m. CDT in a very hot/deeply mixed airmass (shortly before initiation the McCook airport reported a temp/dewpoint of 107/56 F). Between 3:30-4:30 p.m. CDT strong to severe storms quickly unzipped northeastward along the frontal zone into western portions of South Central Nebraska, assuming a mix of multicell and brief supercell structures as they first impacted primarily Gosper/Dawson/Buffalo counties. Over the next few hours, the most intense storms marched across parts of mainly Sherman, Howard, eastern Greeley and far western Nance counties before departing the local area into eastern Nebraska by around 6:30 p.m. CDT. In the wake of this main event, mostly weak convection roamed predominantly southern/eastern portions of South Central Nebraska well into the night...with the briefly-severe storm near Central City around 8 p.m. CDT serving as the last gasp of anything feisty. Getting back to the meteorological setup, this event was fairly weakly-forced in the mid-upper levels, with southern Nebraska residing along the southern fringes of modestly-strong, quasi-zonal flow directed between an upper ridge centered over the Southern Rockies and a trough centered far to the north over southern Canada. As mentioned, the main player at the surface was the invading cold front, with the combination of frontal forcing and intense heating/stout instability proving sufficient to overcome notable capping (evidenced by 700 millibar temperatures averaging 14-16 C). This was actually one of the top-5 hottest days of 2022 across the majority of South Central Nebraska, with most stations topping out between 99-106 F. Through most of this event, the local mesoscale environment featured 1000-3000 J/kg mixed-layer CAPE and 30-35 knots of deep layer wind shear.

July 23, 2022

This Monday afternoon-evening featured the third consecutive day of severe thunderstorms within South Central Nebraska, this time highlighted by a few intense supercells that rolled southeastward through primarily central portions of the area, leaving behind fairly narrow (but in places significant) swaths of damaging winds and/or large hail. The first supercell of the day to invade the local area actually barely brushed its northeast edges, dropping out of northeast Nebraska and skirting eastern/northern portions of Nance, Merrick and Polk counties mainly 3:15-4:15 p.m. CDT before weakening. Although radar signatures and reports from just outside this coverage area suggested that larger hail likely occurred within a small part of South Central Nebraska (especially eastern Nance), the only ground-truth consisted of nickel size stones in Genoa. Following this early activity, a lull of a few hours ensued before the day's main event got underway, consisting of a closely knit pair of twin supercells (precipitation cores separated by no more than 10-15 miles) that marched in step through primarily the following counties between 7-9:30 p.m. CDT: northeastern Dawson, much of Buffalo, northeastern Phelps, much of Kearney, northern/eastern Franklin and western Webster (the separate storm cores eventually merged southeast of Minden). As for wind impacts along this corridor, a few of the most notable reports featured: estimated 100 MPH winds in the Minden area that took down three large metal transmission towers; a mesonet-measured gust of 79 MPH near Axtell and a garage destroyed in town; estimated 70 MPH gusts in the Elm Creek, Kearney and Campbell areas (Kearney Regional Airport AWOS peaked at 61 MPH). All along the aforementioned corridor, there were many instances of flipped irrigation pivots, broken power poles and damaged crops. Hail reports were limited during this main event, but size tended to prevail on the smaller to marginally-severe spectrum, including quarter size stones in Sumner, Odessa and Axtell. About an hour after this initial supercell cluster departed Webster County into Kansas, another large supercell took aim into eastern Dawson/western Buffalo counties from the northwest between 10:30-11:30 p.m. CDT, following a remarkably similar path as the earlier storms and yielding reports of quarter to golf ball size hail in the Eddyville and Miller area before weakening while approaching Interstate 80. A bit later this storm reintensified to radar-indicated severe levels in the Blue Hill area, but there were no verifying reports before it weakened for good over Nuckolls County by 1:30 a.m. CDT, ending the severe storm threat for the night. Outside of the aforementioned supercells, the only other South Central Nebraska severe weather report was a rogue 59 MPH wind gust in Edison, associated with the north end of an overall-weak convective complex that brushed through Furnas, Harlan and Franklin counties from the west between 9-11 p.m. CDT.||Turning to the meteorological background, all supercells that impacted South Central Nebraska initiated at least slightly, if not significantly off to the north-northwest before infiltrating the local area. In fact, the later-evening supercell that entered Dawson/Buffalo counties around 10:30 p.m. CDT developed and first became severe-warned some eight hours prior and 320 miles away...over Weston County, WY! Clearly, the mesoscale environment was quite supportive of long-lived supercells. From a big picture perspective, the basic mid-upper level situation over Nebraska had changed little versus the previous few days, continuing to feature persistent west-northwest flow. However, the big difference on the 6th was that this upper flow became noticeably stronger (aided by the arrival of a pronounced jet streak evident at 300 millibars). As a result, deep layer wind shear ramped up to as high as 50-60 knots. This strong shear profile more than compensated for seasonably-modest instability levels, with evening mixed-layer CAPE over South Central Nebraska only averaging 1000-1500 J/kg. At the surface, there were no features of note, only a weak frontal zone stretched across Nebraska in generally west-northwest to east-southeast fashion.

June 06, 2022

Thunderstorm Wind. Local television station reported downed power lines on the southeast side of Kearney.

December 15, 2021

Tornado. This tornado is a continuation of the tornado that touched down in Kearney County, north of Minden. This tornado was typical for the day, likely intermittent with regard to ground circulation and impacting rural areas. Much of the path damage can be traced to center irrigation pivots either partially or fully overturned. The tornado damaged a couple power poles and peeled back some roofing material at the Rowe Sanctuary. A measured wind gust 83 MPH was recorded at the sanctuary as the storm passed. Damage was a bit sparse north of the river. The tornadic circulation likely crossed Interstate 80 about three miles west of the Gibbon interchange before knocking over a couple more pivots and lifting just southwest of Gibbon. The maximum estimated speed of 85 MPH was based upon the measured wind gust at the sanctuary and damage to nearby power poles.

December 15, 2021

Thunderstorm Wind. Wind gusts estimated to be as high as 80 MPH, tree damage, and power outages occurred along and near this path. The peak measured gust was 68 MPH, recorded at 10:38 PM CDT by a mesonet station located three miles east-southeast of Kearney. Other measured gusts included 66 MPH at 10:24 PM CDT by a mesonet located 2 miles north-northeast of Kearney, 65 MPH at 10:22 PM CDT by a mesonet located 1 mile north of Kearney, and 63 MPH at 10:25 PM CDT by the Kearney Regional Airport AWOS. Law enforcement and emergency management reported at least one semi-truck, other trailers and campers were blown over on Interstate 80 in the Elm Creek area, with zero visibility due to wind and blowing dust. In Elm Creek itself, multiple tree limbs were downed and roof damage was reported. An 18-foot trailer was rolled into the alley behind a home and their neighbor's garage roof was partially torn off and blown into their yard. In and around Kearney, numerous tree limbs were downed, with several trees snapped off at the base. One tree fell onto a home and vehicle, causing some siding and fencing damage. Emergency management reported power outages across town with several transformers blown and some fires due to downed power lines, as well as a few streets, including Highway 30, blocked due to downed tree limbs. The most notable damage report was from the south side of Kearney, where the movie theater suffered major roof damage. Once part of the roof was ripped off, heavy rain fell inside, causing further damage. The theater is not expected to reopen until Thanksgiving or Christmas.

July 09, 2021