Hail in Thayer County, Nebraska

During a 14-hour stretch between 11 p.m CDT on Saturday the 1st and 1 p.m. CDT on Sunday the 2nd, a few rounds of isolated-to-scattered thunderstorms rumbled across various parts of South Central Nebraska from west-to-east. The vast majority of this activity was fairly weak, producing nothing worse than small hail and/or gusty winds under 45 MPH. However, particularly with the initial overnight convection, a few storms earned at least radar-indicated severe status. The first radar-indicated severe storm pushed across parts of Gosper, Furnas and Harlan counties in far southwestern local areas between 11 p.m. and 1 a.m. CDT before weakening (this storm yielded no ground-truth verification). As this initial storm weakened, a smattering of new storms abruptly flared up farther east, affecting portions of several counties along/east of Highway 281 mainly between 1-4 a.m. CDT. The southeastern-most reaches of this convection intensified over Thayer/Fillmore counties between 2:15-3:15 a.m. CDT, yielding a lone report of ping pong ball size hail in Bruning. This convection developed in a very typical large scale/mesoscale environment for spotty, nocturnal activity. In the big picture of the mid-upper levels, broad, quasi-zonal flow prevailed over the Central Plains, featuring embedded weak/low-amplitude disturbances. A bit lower in the troposphere, modest warm air/moisture advection regime was in place in the 850-700 millibar layer...with storms developing within the axis of a modest 30-40 knot low level jet. Around the time of the Bruning hail, mesoscale parameters were semi-supportive of marginally-severe storms, featuring around 1000 J/kg most-unstable CAPE and effective deep-layer shear around 30-35 knots.