KEARNEY — High winds from severe thunderstorms caused damage and power outages across central Nebraska during the evening of Wednesday, July 23.
Severe thunderstorms developed along a boundary in northern and western Nebraska and began to progress eastward during the late afternoon hours. A larger storm complex eventually developed and began to impact south central Nebraska.
Jerilyn Billings Wright, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service – Hastings, said that the peak winds that were recorded include 72-73 mph wind gusts near Elm Creek, Odessa and Wood River. There were also reports of over 70 mph winds in both Merrick and Howard counties later in the evening.
In addition to the peak winds, there was widespread reports of 58-65 mph wind gusts
These severe winds caused a variety of damage, including power lines down north of Grand Island, near Boelus and there were reports of trees down on power lines in Fullerton.
There was also damage to some structures, including outbuildings north of Ravenna and Riverdale.
The severe winds caused multiple power outages across the region. Marsha Banzhaf with Dawson Public Power District said at its peak they had 3,000 customers without power.
Banzhaf said the outages started in their western region in the North Platte area and the outages progressed to the east. She noted that Buffalo County had more outages than any other region.
It was noted that a larger Nebraska Public Power District line went down and DPPD workers had to reroute power around the area to restore service.
Grant Otten with Nebraska Public Power District said “Kearney had 12 customers out from 7 p.m. to 9:20 p.m., Ravenna had 43 customers total impacted with outages starting around 7:09 p.m. and all customers restored by 10:25 p.m., and Ashton had 146 customers impacted from 7:22 p.m. to 8:30 p.m.”
“All were caused by the severe thunderstorms. We also had approximately 18 structures damaged on a line near the Riverdale area,” Otten stated.
In addition to the power outages, Riverdale suffered extensive tree limb damage throughout the community, with large limbs blown down and in one case, one established tree was split in half. Several vehicle appeared to have suffered damage from falling tree limbs.
One resident said the large limbs “just started to come down” when the most severe winds hit the community.
There was also minor flooding in Elm Creek and North Platte after thunderstorms trained over the same area, bringing large amounts of rain in a short time.
