Thunderstorm Wind — Stanton, Nebraska

2024-04-01 · near Pilger, Stanton, Nebraska

Event narrative

Emergency management reported half a miles of powerlines down on Highway 15 near its intersection with County Road 831.

Wider weather episode

Upper air analysis on the evening of March 31st showed a strong positively tilted trough with its axis extending from southern California into the northern High Plains. Strong flow aloft and height falls overspread the Plains leading to widespread cloud cover and precipitation development after midnight. At 250 AM CDT, an isolated thunderstorm moved into Boone County from the west with widespread light stratiform precipitation to the north across portions of northeast Nebraska. As this storm tracked east-northeast across the County Warning Area (CWA), it gradually strengthened, ultimately warranting a severe thunderstorm warning shortly after 400 AM CDT. At this time, the Stanton County Emergency Manager (EM) was relaying pictures and videos of heavy rain and hail across the county, some of which were the size of quarters. This storm continued into Cuming County before beginning to weaken as it crossed into west-central Iowa at around 510 AM CDT.

After the sun came up the morning of April 1st, additional damage pictures were sent to the office from the Stanton and Cuming County EMs. A swatch of damaging winds across the two counties associated with this storm resulted in downed power lines, center pivots being overturned and roof damage to several farm buildings. Due to the amount of hail that fell in this storm, roads remained covered for several hours after the storm had passed.

View location on OpenStreetMap → (41.8897, -97.0500)

Source: NOAA Storm Events Database, event_id 1164047. Narrative written by the NWS forecast office that issued the report.