Tornado hits close to home!

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walrus1957

SatelliteGuys Pro
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Sep 24, 2008
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40 miles west of Omaha
Friday evening June 17th 2011, just went to bed early after a very long week at work. Getting rested up for all the fun on Father's day.

Friday afternoon was hot, just taken care of the dogs, noticed a storm building just over head. No clouds to the west, but building right over the top of the house. In about two hours time I could hear the rumble of thunder and the sky turned black to the east. No worry, storms always move to the east so I figured it was OK to drop off to sleep around 7:00 in the evening. (I'm up at 3:00 AM every morning so always early to bed).

No more than my head hit the pillow and the phone starting ringing! It was the wife who was visiting my son in Lincoln NE. She said Kyle a friend of my son just called and was filming a tornado just outside our house! She wanted to know what was going on. I looked out the window and saw clear sky straight above the house, but nasty weather just 1 mile to the east down county road T.

You have to check out this video link: YouTube - ?Nebraska Tornado Develops?‏

There is also a video at KETV station out of Omaha of the same tornado but not as cool is this one. The video was taken around 7 in the evening and about 2 to 3 miles due east of my house. This isn't the first tornado that has come close. In 2001 we had a twister that hit the field a few houndred feet west of the house that really tore up some of our trees and did some damage to the siding ( that was at 4:00 in the morning), and again in 2008 that pulled an 80 foot ash tree out of the yard that was 50 feet from the house.

What makes this video so great is the recorded conversation! You have to love it! My wife says it sounds like Kyle and his girlfriend are married, they just sound like married couples!

I haven't driven down the road to check for damage yet, maybe I will do that later this afternoon. Looks like the Tornado crossed Highway 30 about 2 to 3 miles east of the house. County road T runs parrellel to HWY 30 one mile north.
 
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Don't see your link.

But happy to hear you an yours are all okay.
We really don't need any more tragic stories. :up
 
More Storms Monday in Nebraska (and all around)

Went back to work Monday after a week of vacation. At 8pm, a real doozy of a storm blew through the eastern part of the state. The downed power lines were right in front of the plant that I work in. We were in near dark (emergency lighting only) from 8 pm to about 1 am. The car in the tree was about 3/4 mile from my Mom's house. Made it home after work at about 2 am - had no power at home til about 3 am.

The graph is the Missouri River at Plattsmouth, NE. The Elkhorn River dumps into the Platte River upstream and the Platte dumps into the Missouri right at the point where the gauge is for this graph. All three rivers were extremely high already. Please, no more rain! Notice that flood stage is 26 feet at this gauging station and it has already been running at ~34 feet. We got almost four inches of rain up river on the Elkhorn the morning of the 20th and now this storm came that evening. I don't think their predicted future river level is going to hold water (so to speak).

RADAR
 

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No Power! Horrors. We went to church Sunday and found out power had been off for 10 hours or so by that time! We have no commercial power so did not know.
I am glad you were not hurt and hope you had no damage.

Edit: what I started to reply for, then got sidetracked.: We get the winds and twisting (so far not that bad or widespread) but no cloud buildup. Just a big whump and it is on us. Sometime lasts for hours, and so far has been narrow track. Winds ripped the canopy off my utility trailer last week and dropped it 20 feet away. It had 4 bolts on each side!
 
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Hey Pop,

So have you been getting some unusual strong winds this year? Or do you experience a "windy" season every year?

This last storm (Monday evening) was a big one covering from South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas and down into Oklahoma. I heard that it spawned 48 tornados in Nebraska alone, but that is an unofficial count. The damage that I see locally from Monday night's storm, I cannot believe was from a tornado. I am certain it was just straight-line winds or a micro-burst as all the debris was laid out perfectly in the same direction as if someone just drove through with a (very wide) bulldozer on a straight path. A tornado wouldn't do that, even if it were a small one (although it does take a strong wind to flip a car over and push it into a large tree hard enough to break the tree).

Lots of tree service and power line repair locally, but thankfully I haven't heard of anyone being hurt. The folks at the College World Series that night probably weren't too happy, though.

I find it amazing how much power there is even in a strong, non-tornadic wind! Notice in one picture how clean the break of the power-line pole was, almost as if someone just cut it with a chainsaw. Not sure how fast the windspeed was at our plant, but about a mile west the NWS station reported the windspeed there at about 79 mph and they didn't have any damage, so at our plant it must have been much higher and it was NOT a tornado.

RADAR
 
Thankfully Monday's storm wasn't as damaging here at North Bend, folks to the west got hammered pretty good. The Tornado that past by the house a week ago didn't do much damage. I checked out the path and as close as it came to the house was Hwy 30 and County road 11 which is about 3 miles away.

However all this rain we have been getting is flooding the feilds again, same as this time last year when my cabin along the Elkhorn river got flooded out pretty good. I made a short video of the flooding at the cabin last year and posted it to KETV U Local, TV station out of Omaha. The video has photos my sons took of the cabins in the campground as well as my lot. If your able to watch the video at KETV U Local, the silver van in the video, as well as the two tan cabins (one of them has the satellite dishes out front) are mine. No water in the cabins but came very close to it last year in June.

Hopefully this link is still good for the video: hxxp://ulocal.ketv.com/_Shurman-campground-near-Nickerson-NE/video/1145832/62922.html

Sorry about the prior link I listed for the Tornado footage, forgot to X out the tt's.
 
AcWxRadar: Our wind is rather constant min. of 14 MPH with gusts to 35 and frequently 40 with gusts to 55. Then strong winds of 70 to 85 gusts to 112! And once a year - usually on Oct 30-Nov 1 winds over 100 for a couple of hours - highest we have seen was measured 1/4 mile away was a gust of 179. ( That was this December, 2010 - at least 6 hours of high winds.) Do not know length of that one. My anemometer broke at 128 mph 10 second gust. That is the one that took out my OTA antenna, my 10 foot Wingard and post & the 85E, destroyed an 11 ft. assembled but still on the ground and fried my switches.
The winds that took off the roofs and canopy (we saw) were twisters. The weatherman will not call them tornadoes.
 
Pop,

Holy cow patties!

I saw a show on the windiest places in the US a few years back, but I didn't know that you LIVED there! LOL!

Seriously and sincerely, I thought that the most windy place in the US was somewhere in the northeast on some mountain in Vermont or New Hampshire or thereabouts. I know you don't live there, but it sounds like you might be a dang close contender and probably for the same reasons... terrain.

By the way, the NWS has officially categorized the storm that hit Fremont, NE on June 20th as a category EF1 tornado. That is absolutely nothing compared to what other's have been through this year (Joplin) so I am not attempting to compare it in any way. It is just that there were pictures of something close to home available to share.

just FYI: The Fujita Scale of Tornado Intensity

RADAR
 
Not sure if I buy into any man made global warming nonsense, but natural cyclic climate change is a for SURE! I have to agree the winters here are getting more extreme as to the amount of snow we get, and the summer rains are more intense and frequent.

Anyone viewing this thread that have photos or stories of your local weather over the past year, I encorouge to post here so we can all share as to what is happening with the climate.

As far as winds go, it has always been windy in eastern Nebraska as far back as I can remember. But the difference these days is there are fewer days of calm, and when the wind blows it isn't the usual 20 mph sustained with gusts up to 40, but more the sustained over 35 mph and gusts to 70.

Looking through the forum I notice several other threads relating to extreme weather, and a lot of members complaining about wind damge to their dish and power lose due to downed tree limbs. When things get dull or slow there is always the weather to make conversation with, how many times have you been greeted in a conversation with "its a buetiful day, great weather were having"? Now days the greetings seem to be "sucky weather were having, no power at home the past two days and the power company says it maybe a week before all power is restored".
 
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