'You're not dreaming. It's been intense.' Omaha's storm season is setting unwanted records (2024)

Hurricane-like winds toppled trees and power poles, causing the largest power outage in the Omaha Public Power District’s history.

An Arbor Day tornado outbreak that helped land eastern Nebraska and southwest Iowa into the largest number of tornado warnings in any year since the National Weather Service began compiling records in 1986.

In between, heavy rains pushed some creeks and reservoirs to record heights, along with some record-sized hail.

If you’ve been thinking it’s been a rough summer for severe weather, you are right.

“You’re not dreaming. It’s been intense, at least for eastern Nebraska and western Iowa,” said Brian Barjenbruch, science and operations officer for the weather service’s office in Valley.

While Wednesday evening’s storm did not go the distance required to meet the definition of a rare derecho, it did pack winds strong enough to meet that mark, including a maximum gust of 92 mph a mile southwest of Denton, Nebraska. A 90 mph gust at Eppley Airfield was the fourth-highest recorded there.

As of Friday, the office had issued 129 tornado warnings for its warning area in eastern Nebraska and southwest Iowa, the most in a single year since documentation began. That was up from 118 at the end of June, a figure that broke the previous record of 87 tornado warnings in 2008.

The office also had issued 381 severe thunderstorm warnings, the third most for January through July since tallies began in 1986. The unofficial tornado count for the year to date stood at 72. Agency staff are evaluating potential tornadoes embedded in Wednesday night’s storms. Initial reports indicated two possible twisters, one in Cass County and another in Council Bluffs.

But the 70 tornadoes documented before Wednesday’s storms nearly doubled the previous record of 41 tornadoes in 2008. Barjenbruch previously noted that use of social media and the ability for anyone to snap a photo with their phone as a factor in the increase in recorded tornadoes.

The Arbor Day outbreak alone was one for the record books, with 42 tornado warnings issued in a single day. A total of 24 tornadoes were recorded. Based on new data, the weather service last week upgraded one that tracked through the Elkhorn, Bennington and Blair areas to an EF4, the first such twister recorded in Nebraska since four EF4 tornadoes struck northeast Nebraska, including Pilger, on June 16, 2014.

One day can mean lots of pain

Indeed, a University of Nebraska Extension official noted in late May that this spring had marked a return to an active weather pattern conducive to thunderstorms.

That was the opposite of last year, when much of eastern Nebraska had hardly any rain in April, May and much of June, part of a string of dry years.

The latest U.S. Drought Monitor map on July 30, published by the National Drought Mitigation Center, housed at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, showed one area of severe to moderate drought in the Nebraska Panhandle with some abnormally dry areas in the southwest, the southeast border and the northeast.

Cumulative precipitation for the Omaha area through July 31 was a little more than 5 inches ahead of normal, according to weather service records. Lincoln had accumulated nearly 2.8 inches more than its usual total and Norfolk had received 6.3 inches more precipitation than normal.

And while average temperatures in the Omaha area ran about a degree above normal in May and June, July ranged between 1 and 1.5 degrees below normal. National maps show a somewhat cooler midsection sandwiched between baking coasts.

Barjenbruch said being in somewhat of a transition zone has abetted some of the recent stormy conditions. “When you get a big ridge to the west or east, a lot of times we’re in the frontal zone where the storms fire up,” he said.

And while it has been a bad season for severe weather, he said, it really only takes one bad day to create a terrible scenario for an individual, or a particular area, he said. This year, there have been four or five days where conditions came together to create such storms.

Another came on June 25, when the weather service issued 51 severe thunderstorm warnings, the second highest number in a day. That same day, a report of a 4.5-inch hailstone in Bellevue tied for the biggest hailstone recorded in the Omaha metro area.

“Some of those days started as foggy and cloudy and cool and ended up with EF4 tornadoes,” Barjenbruch said. “Some days like this last one, we had a heat index pushing 110-115 (degrees) and that helped fuel it. The atmosphere ... does amazing things. This year has been particularly rough.”

‘An awful year for this kind of stuff’

Area residents have noticed.

Steve Barchus, who lives near 94th and Pacific Streets, has a big hole in his roof thanks to Wednesday evening’s storm. But he said he feels lucky considering the destruction some have faced this storm season, especially those caught in the Arbor Day tornado outbreak. That April 26 storm smashed hundreds of homes, farms and businesses.

“Those poor people out there — just everything was destroyed,” he said. “Your heart has to go out to them.”

He said one of the most memorable years for weather he can remember is 1975, when a tornado devastated areas of Omaha and a blizzard buried the city in snow.

“It was a crazy time,” he said. “It was a bad weather pattern, kind of like what we’re in now.”

Still, Barchus said he sees dealing with storms and tornadoes as just a part of living in the Midwest.

“We’re not in the area where you have wonderful weather,” he said, “but we don’t have hurricanes, we don’t have earthquakes. I’d rather not have those.”

Erin Walsh and Caleb Cotton said they had gotten lucky and had not had to deal with damage from the previous storms this summer. But a tree fell in their yard near 94th and Pacific Streets after Wednesday’s storm.

“It seems like it’s been an awful year for this kind of stuff,” Walsh said. “You get lucky with the other ones, but when there are so many storms, you eventually don’t get lucky.”

Some of those who have been unlucky in this round of storms, meanwhile, still are clearing debris, waiting for power and other services to be restored and trying to line up home repairs. On Saturday, as fallen trees still littered the Omaha metro, the lines to dump tree debris meant people had to draw on stores of their limited patience remaining. On Saturday afternoon, some 50,000 Omaha Public Power District customers were still without electricity and dark traffic signals dotted the state’s biggest city.

“I don’t have to tell anybody that it was very intense,” Barjenbruch said.

Nor is it clear whether the region is done rolling the dice.

While severe weather tends to taper off beginning in mid-July, it can still rumble through in August and September. The region has recorded EF4 tornadoes in October. And plenty of area residents will remember the storm that produced tornadoes rated as high as EF2 in Nebraska and western Iowa on Dec. 15, 2021.

“It’s been an aggressive year in terms of severe weather,” Barjenbruch said.

World-Herald staff writer Henry J. Cordes contributed to this report.