Nebraska Among Many Places Facing Continued Big Flood Disasters

A highway interchange near Omaha, Nebraska Saturday

Locally here in Vermont, as of this Sunday morning there were no reports of any real ice jam flooding from the just ended warm spell and snow melt.

That's a tiny bright spot in a year that nationally and globally, is turning into another Year Of The Flood. 


I was struck by the record flooding in different parts of the nation and world in 2017, then worriedly shocked that it the flooding in different areas seemed actually worse in 2018.

EVERYWHERE, IT SEEMS

Now it's 2019, and we're off to a very tough start when it comes to flooding. Tennessee and surrounding areas were swamped by flooding, some of it at record levels.

California got it in on the flooding this winter, too, as the Russian River in the north inundated areas around the Napa Valley and mudslides combined with flash floods created repeated messes up and down the state.

AccuWeather notes that the Ohio River around Cairo, Illinois has been above flood stage for over a month, and will conitinue to fluctuate between moderate and major flooding through the end of this month.

It's not just in the USA. Some recent examples: Immense flash flooding in Sao Paulo, Brazil killed 12 people earlier this month. More than 100 people died from flooding caused by a cyclone in Mozambique and Zimbabwe this week. Flash flooding killed at least 50 people in Indonesia this weekend. In Wales, serious flooding this weekend sent at least river to record high levels.

Back in the United States, more high water is poised to come downstream in many areas throughout the middle of the nation. Snowmelt in the northern tier will keep the risk of flooding going for at least a month along the Canadian border pretty much from Washington to Maine.

The newest developing hotspot for potential flooding appears to be Montana. The spring thaw is late there after just about the coldest February and early March on record. Plus it snowed a TON in Montana and surrounding areas during the second half of winter.

This week, temperatures in much of Montana are expected to rise into the low 50s. That's not exceptionally warm for this time of year, but toasty enough to rapidly melt that deep snow cover. Flooding is expected to begin this week.

DOWNSTREAM DISASTER

The water from Montana and snow melt from North Dakota, western and central South Dakota Minnesota and Wisconsin will eventually flow into midsized rivers, then big rivers like the Missouri.

This will probably keep the Missouri and Mississippi Rivers flooding for weeks. That flooding on the Mississippi, already ongoing all the way to near the Gulf Coast will be prolonged by this spring snow melt.  

Flooding in Nebraska this weekend. 

Spring floods are nothing new in the northern and middle parts of the nation. Neither are big storms like the so-called "bomb cyclone" that set off the worst of the flooding last week. While you definitely can't say with any certainty that this latest disaster in Nebraska was "caused" by climate change, it's possible that climate change influenced it.

As the Omaha World-Herald notes, this has all some fingerprints of climate change on it.  Storms are getting wetter, some of the extremes of weather are getting more extreme, and the end result is that what would have been small disasters might be becoming bigger disasters. Like this week's floods in and around Nebraska.

Here's an except from the World-Herald:

"....human-caused climate change is warming the planet at an accelerating pace, and that has set the stage for even more extreme weather.

'For sure, the strongest storms are getting stronger with global warming, said noted climate scientist James Hansen, a native of Iowa. As the Earth warms, its atmosphere has become richer with moisture, which means there's more latent energy for storms to tap.

Some studies indicate that the factors that led to the type of storm that struck the Great Plains last week are increasing, said Michael Mann, director of the Penn State Earth System Science Center. 

'There is evidence now in modeling studies that climate change is increasing these factors, supporting the development of more intense bomb cyclones and Nor'easters, packing tropicl storm-scale winds dumping huge amounts of precipitation (often in the form of huge snowfalls.)'"

This trend toward more storminess and wetter conditions helped set the stage for this week's flooding in and around Nebraska and the February floods in the lower Ohio Valley.

The year 2018 was among the wettest on record from the central Plains to the East Coast. Rivers were still running relatively high as the year closed because of this.

We had a terribly stormy winter, leading to the nation's wettest February on record. That helped set off the destructive floods in Tennessee last month. Then this bomb cyclone hit, bringing unseasonably heavy downpours of one to three inches northward from Kansas to South Dakota. All this rain, falling on dense snow cover created incredible amounts of runoff. The ground was largely frozen, so nothing sank in. All the water went into streams, rivers and neighborhoods.

This was an extreme, terribly destructive case of the much milder, much more benign spring flood scenarios that have long played out in late winter and spring in the Plains and elsewhere across the North.

With these new extremes apparently in play, once again, flood records are being set.

In Nebraska and Iowa, the benchmarks for worst Missouri River floods were 1993 and 2011, both relatively recent years. At Nebraska City, the Missouri River was expected to crest today at 30.2 feet, which is two feet higher than the previous record crest in 2011, says the Nebraska City News-Press.

At least 38 locations in five states in the middle of the nation has so far set new record flood crests in the past few days, reports The Weather Channel.

The United States is getting a temporary reprieve from the storminess and heavy rain from recent months. The next chance of any substantial, heavy rains won't come until at least March 25 or 26.  It's too soon to say how stormy it will get, more where and how or if much rain will fall in late March and April.

Across the North, including here in New England, we still have to be on alert. In general, storms are surprising us with their ferocity more than they did decades ago. Chances are high nothing really bad will happen around here later this spring. But you never know.

Back in Nebraska, John Pollack, a retired National Weather Service meteorologist told the Omaha World-Herald, "Disasters have become more likely to happen...Our risk is changing, the risk of flooding is getting worse."

Videos Show The Huge Extent Of Plains Flooding, Blizzard

Darlington, Wisconsin is just one of many communities in the middle
of the nation being hit hard by serious flooding now. 

This past week's big storm is gone and the nation has mercifully entered a period of quiet weather.

The large storm's last gasp was a round of locally severe thunderstorms last evening from southern New England through the Middle Atlantic states along the system's dying cold front.

There were reports of hail the size of half dollars in Newtown, Connecticut and numerous reports of storm-toppled trees in Pennsylvania.

In the Plains, the weather has turned sunny with light winds in areas affeced by the blizzard and flooding. But rivers in the region, including parts of the Missouri, have or are experiencing record crests.

Potential danger lies ahead of course. In the short term across our region, flood watches remain in effect today in much of Vermont and northern New York. It's much cooler today, but runoff continues from Friday's snow melt. That's making rivers rise enough to loosen ice, and the risk of ice jam flooding continues through the day today.

Flood damage in Nebraska as seen in this photo by
Nebraska State Police

Elsewhere, in the somewhat longer term, the northern reaches of Minnesota and Wisconsin still have tons of snow, so that could create some more serious flooding later in the spring.

Up in Montana, Idaho and some other parts of the Rocky Mountains, tremendous amounts of snow fell during a frigid February and early March. That has National Weather Service offices there putting out alerts to the public for the flood potential later on.

All that snow and ice seems destined to create flooding in Montana, especially if there's a fast warm-up. This would also cause another unwelcome surge of water down the Missouri River, which means there could be another destructive crest in eastern South Dakota, Nebraska and Iowa later this spring.

Some snow melted in far northern New England, but there's a lot left, especially in northern Maine so that will have to be monitored.

But right now, people are focused on the immediate aftermath of this past week's monster storm, including continued flooding in Nebraska, Iowa, South Dakota, Minnesota and Wisconsin, among other places.

There are, of course, lots of videos, and we have some samples below.

This view taken the day after the blizzard looks post-apocalyptic with all the abandoned cars, the low sun and the drifting snow on a flat landscape:



Here's a montage of scenes from the Colorado blizzard:



Drone video of flooding in Nebraska:



Another aerial shot showing how widespread the Nebraska flooding is. This is the city of North Bend:

Tornado, Flood Season Hit Hard Wednesday And It's Going To Get Worse

Brett Wright captured this tornado Wednesday
near Verden, Oklahoma.  

Oklahoma City and environs are a mess this morning, and things aren't going to get better anytime soon.

The city is used to severe weather, but the Oklahoma City was rocked to its core by several tornadoes, hail the size of baseballs in some spots, and record flooding.

See the tornado videos at the bottom of this post.

This all started Wednesday, and by this morning water rescues were still ongoing in parts of the city.

Oklahoma City had 7.1 inches of rain Wednesday. Hail fell for 67 consecutive minutes at Will Rogers International Airport in Oklahoma City. The airport was shut down amid tornado warnings and flooding.

The Oklahoman newspaper reported no deaths from the tornadoes, but 12 people were injured, two critically in the area.

Tornado near Halstead, Kansas on Wednesday. 

One tornado destroyed a motel and a storage facility, and damaged other buildings near Interstate 35 in Oklahoma City, Rescuers had trouble reaching the area due to flooding and debris on the roads, says the Oklahoman. 

Major highways like Interstates 35 and 44 closed due to flooding and flying debris. There was quite a bit of tornado and flood damage in the Oklahoma City suburbs of Newcastle, Bridge Creek and Norman, all communities that have been devastated by major tornadoes in the past decade.

Wild animals, including tigers, escaped from an animal park in Tuttle, Oklahoma when a tornado struck, but the animals were later rounded up.

Extensive damage was also reported in Kansas and Nebraska, where the small town of Roseland was hit hard by a tornado. Flash flood warnings and alerts are scattered in areas from Nebraska to Texas this morning as heavy thunderstorms continue.

Torndo damage near Mount Hope, Kansas.  

Up to nine inches of rain fell near Lincoln, Nebraska.

NOAA's Storm Prediction Center this morning had 50 preliminary reports of tornadoes from Wednesday in Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma and Texas.

Severe weather, tornadoes and flooding are expected to continue today, Friday and especially Saturday in Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas and some surrounding states.

Until now, it's been a quiet severe storm season. This week, clearly, it's not.

Severe thunderstorms, large hail, torrential downpours, and a few tornadoes are expected to repeatedly hit the central and southern Plains today and Friday.

Saturday looks awful. The ingredients seem to be coming together for a major severe weather outbreak, complete with strong tornadoes in from southern Nebraska into large parts of Texas. Once again, Oklahoma City appears as it it will be near the epicenter of Saturday's expected major storm outbreak.

Flooding will continue, too. Forecasters expect three to seven inches of rain, with locally higher amounts in the central and southern Plains over the next week.

From StormChasingVideos.com, heres a scary tornado, with multiple vortices,  near Lincoln, Kansas:


Here's a video inside a developing tornado circulation in Norman, Oklahoma on Wednesday:



Video of tornadoes, severe storms, and damage in Newcastle and Moore, Oklahoma:

Video Shows Tornado Blasting Store, Then Stunned Survivors

A surveillance video surfaced last month taken inside a store in that town in Nebraska that was hit by double tornadoes in June.

The video shows the store blasting apart, then people slowly emerging closets and such where they took shelter  to see what happened.

They look stunned, as anybody would be.  Amazingly, nobody was hurt in this store.

Here's the video:

Another Huge Nebraska Tornado; This Time Sparing A Town

Another dramatic tornado hit Nebraska yesterday, but the good news is the town it threatened was mostly spared.

Huge tornado near Coleridge, Nebraska yesterday. 

That was unlike the double tornado that killed two people and trashed the town of Pilger, Nebraska.

This time, a huge tornado roared past just outside the small town of Coleridge, Nebraska, a town of about 500 not far south of the southeastern South Dakota border.

It did cause some damage, but at least the town of Coleridge is still pretty much there.

There is still a threat of severe weather, and maybe even a couple more tornadoes in the same area today, but the weather should calm down a bit in Nebraska, Iowa and South Dakota for the end of the week.

Which is great news, as even those places not hit be tornadoes have been repeatedly battered by severe floods, huge hail and terrible windstorms over the past couple of weeks.

Elsewhere in the nation, severe storms are also forecast in the Great Lakes area today. Strong storms hit the Northeast last night, and there might be a few more today south of New England.

Here's a video of it touching down and then becoming huge. Pretty amazing.

 

Here's another view of the same giant tornado. Note in much of the video how slow its forward speed is. Apparently, it sat just outside the town of Coleridge for as much as a half hour before moving on and dissipating:

Twin Tornadoes Are Rare, But Also Take Many Forms

Yesterday's giant twin tornadoes in Nebraska.  

Last night me, and a lot of other weather watchers, were hyperventilating over those twin tornadoes that wrecked the town of Pilger, Nebraska, killing a five year old kid and injuring several others.  

I, and many others, said they have never seen anything like it: Two strong tornadoes, shoulder to shoulder, roaring across the Plains.

But there have been a few similar incidents over the years.

However, it remains to be seen if there have ever been two tornadoes as strong as the Nebraska ones co-existing a mile or less apart.

The closest thing I could find to yesterday's twister: Twin funnels
Elkhard, Indiana, April, 1965  

The closest thing I could find to yesterday's Nebraska disaster was a tornado in Elkhart, Indiana on April 11, 1965.

The famous photo of the tornado shows two distinct, large, strong funnels. But it's unclear if that is two independent tornadoes, or a one multivortex tornado.  

Multivortex tornadoes are more common than two distinct tornadoes near each other.

Multi-vortex tornadoes are indeed one twister, but they contain mini tornadoes that swirl around inside the main circulation of the funnel.

The mini funnels help explain why you often seen tornado damage in which one house is destroyed while another just feet away has relatively minor damage.

Another example of twin tornadoes.  A view from Yankton, South
Dakota across the Missouri River to Nebraska shows these
two twisters in May, 2007. These storms were weaker than
the ones that hit Nebraska Monday.  

The mini-funnels inside a multi-vortex tornado focus and intensify the wind in small paths within the larger path of the parent tornado.

That's why the damage is so variable in many tornadoes.

In other cases, two tornadoes exist at the same time within one supercell thunderstorm. These giant storms often cycle tornadoes.

One forms, carves a path of destruction, then starts to weaken in favor of a new tornado nearby.

Usually, though, one of the tornadoes is weak, while one is strong. I wonder if yesterday's Nebraska tornadoes set some sort of record for two nearby tornadoes co-existing while maintaining their strength.

This looks like three tornadoes, but it's one multivortex tornado
The funnels are rotating around a main circulation within one twister.  

I'm sure the meteorologists will be studying this one really intensely.

 

 

Incredibly Rare, Tragic and Deadly Twin Tornadoes In Nebraska

Twin tornadoes leave Pilger, Nebraska after devastating
the town on Monday. Photo by Steve Silberman. 

I don't think I've ever seen this:

Two very large tornadoes marched through parts of Nebraska side by side this afternoon, killing at least one person and injuring many more

The two tornadoes teamed to devastate the tiny town of Pilger, Nebraska.   

I have seen cases in which a large tornado roars through an area, accompanied by a small, satellite tornado.

But I can't remember ever seeing enormous, strong tornadoes shoulder to shoulder, causing twin paths of destruction.

The severe weather outbreak has been going on all day, and continuous this evening.

Tornadoes continue to spin through the region. Winds gusted as high as 96 mph in Sioux Falls, South Dakota.   Once again, there have been numerous reports of basebaill sized hail.

Torrential rains falling from storms repeatedly raking over the same areas of South Dakota, Iowa, Minnesota and Nebraska has touched off severe flooding.

As the storms continue tonight, the flooding will get worse.  Overall, this might not be the worst tornado outbreak the Great Plains has ever seen, but the combination of twisters, huge hail, incredible winds and Noah's Ark style floods is causing what will probably amount to billions of dollars in damage.

That's especially true that these severe storms have been going on almost daily in the region since the start of the month. This is truly an extreme weather event in a year of extreme weather events

Here's a video of the incredible twin tornadoes in Nebraska.

Another Look At Most Insane Hail I've Ever Heard Of, In Nebraska

There's a storm chaser with an outfit called Extreme Instability, with a base in Blair, Nebraska.

From Extreme Instability: The storm blasts through
Nebraska on June 3.  

On June 3, forecasts indicated a pretty nasty tornado outbreak in the southern half of Nebraska and into Iowa and Kansas. The guy with Extreme Instability (hard to find his name in the web site) decided to go after them.

Meanwhile, a supercell thunderstorm got going in southwestern South Dakota and moved southeastward into northern Nebraska.

Though that storm was heading toward his hometown, he decided not to chase it. It was north of a warm front, not the right location for the storm to drop a tornado.

The supercell was impressive looking on radar, but not enough to really get into.

He jogged north to take some photographs of it, then went off for his tornadoes.

From Extreme Instability: Hail damage in Nebraska
after the June 3 storm.  (Click on image to really
see the damage) 

But the storm got so intense, that outflow from it, interacting with the warm front, reduced the amount of tornadoes that could get going.

That supercell that had originated in South Dakota got incredibly intense, and produced one of the most spectacular, destructive hailstorms this nation has seen.

And it slammed Extreme Instability's hometown of Blair. Within this supercell, hail the size of baseballs and larger were propelled by winds of 70 to as much as 100 mph.

Picture a horde of several hundred Major League Baseball players throwing pitches at your house and that's essentially what was going on.

This storm had to be big. I happened to be in Yankton, South Dakota, just across the Missouri River from Nebraska when this monster storm passed by. At its closest approach, the core of the storm was about 60 miles away from me.  

Ruined vehicles at a Nebraska car dealership after
baseball sized hail and winds of 70 mph. Photo
from Extreme Instability. 

Even so, the storm was such a monster its anvil top came overhead. It got remarkably dark for mid-afternoon, and there was this deep, rumbling thunder that keep rolling and rolling.

This storm even managed to throw a few small hailstones all the way up to Yankton.

I could tell this was a beast, and glad it wasn't hitting my relatives' house in Yankton.

But it did hit Extreme Instability's hometown. And the photos he took are a testament to the power of this incredible hail and wind.

It must have been terrifying to be in it.

The Nation's Spring Of Hail Storms Continues Its Destructive Path

Hailstorm approaches Norfolk, Neb. Tuesday.  

There was another huge severe weather outbreak in the Plains and Midwest yesterday and last night, and once again tornadoes weren't really the big story. It was the hail.

According to the National Severe Storms Center preliminary count of severe weather reports from Tuesday, there were 13 reports of tornadoes, 214 reports of wind damage and 251 reports of hail damage.

Most of this was concentrated in and near Nebraska.

Photographer Krista Kiese captured this storm
in Nebraska, Photo came via Twitter.  

This might have been the worst of epic hail outbreaks the nation has seen this year.

At one large car dealership in Nebraska alone, as many as 4,500 cars worth $152 million were damaged or destroyed by tennis and baseball sized hail driven by winds of 70 mph.  

When you get hail the size of tennis or baseballs and 80 mph winds propel them, houses get pretty much shredded. Roofs, windows, siding all get destroyed. You practically have to totally rebuild.

From @BTsullivan on Twitter, this Nebraska home
was shredded by huge hail propelled by hurricane force winds.  

The skies were interesting, too. When you get a supercell thunderstorm loaded with lots and lots of hail, the chunks of ice color the menacing storm clouds in shades of green and blue.

So right before people saw their houses and cars trashed by the hail, they were treated to some scary but beautiful skies.

Things will be calmer across the nation the rest of the week, though there's still the threat of severe thunderstorms, including damaging, large hail, for the next three days, especially around the middle of the country.





Here's a video of huge hail and strong winds blasting Norfolk, Nebraska.




The end of this next, dramatic video demonstrates why you should stay away from windows when the hail gets to be tennis ball sized, and propelled by high winds:

Big Severe Weather Event Today, And I (Might) Have A Ringside Seat

Anyone who has taken a quick glance at the this morning's weather news knows they're gearing up today for a severe weather outbreak across the middle of the country.  It seems Nebraska and Iowa are in the principal target zones.  

This map shows storm chasers
converging on Nebraska this morning.
Each dot represents a stormchasing team.  

Usually, I'm far removed from this kind of thing, as I live in Vermont. But I'm still in Yankton, South Dakota, visiting relatives.

Will I get a front row seat to this?

I was treated to Great Plains style, thrilling severe weather on Sunday, with hail and 68 mph winds in a severe storm that hit the town.

Today, Yankton, right on the Missouri River and near the border with Nebraska, is right on the edge of the expected core of the severe weather outbreak.

Will today turn out to be scary, exciting or boring for me? We'll see.

The media really hypes this sort of thing, which is probably good, since it gets people in the mood to hide in their basements when the tornado sirens go off. But otherwise, people are pretty nonchalant about the expected bad weather.

The web page for television station KSFY in Sioux Falls doesn't talk much about the severe weather, except to say the storm damage in Yankton Sunday was caused by straight line winds and not a tornado. The news from them is about a robbery spree and the state's primary election today.

Of course, Sioux Falls isn't in the heart of the storm threat area.

The lead story on KETV's web site  in Omaha, Nebraska is the expected severe weather, however.

So we'll see how this plays out. As of midmorning strong storms were already rumbling over southwestern South Dakota. I'm sure zillions of storm chasers are deployed in the region, and we'll have oodles of photos and videos of the bad weather.

Let's not get run over by these storms, guys.

Those Amazing Supercell Scary "Alien Mothership" Clouds Photos Just Keep Coming

The photo and video I posted yesterday of the amazing supercell thunderstorm in Wyoming went viral yesterday and for good reason. It was the best cloud photo I think I've ever seen.  

This photo from @WeatherTours on Twitter, captured this supercell
Monday near Gurley, Nebraska. Add caption

It'll be almost impossible to top that, but people will keep trying.

The storm system that caused that incredible supercell Wyoming Sunday moved toward Nebraska Monday, causing another spectacular cloud display in the southwestern part of the state Monday.

The result was more awesome cloud photography.

Australian storm chaser Daniel Shaw got this image
of the supercell near Julesberg, Nebraska.  

Great Tornado Video, But Not Smart Video Maker

Somebody took a great video of that tornado Friday in Wayne, Nebraska from inside a truck stop. (Vid is at the bottom of this post.)

Aerial view of destruction from Friday's Wayne,,
Nebraska tornado  

I'm not sure the person taking the video was so smart, standing there by the windows as the tornado began to tear the building apart. But what do I know?

Luckily, the tornado gave the truck stop only a glancing blow, so only parts of the building blew away.

Especially luckily, since the tornado clipped the building opposite from where the guy was shooting video.

The building held until halfway the video. The loud crashes as parts started to blow around finally prompted the people in the building to take shelter. But by the time they finally made it to a safer, windowless rest room  the tornado had pretty much passed.

I'm torn by this tornado video: Incredibly exciting to watch, but should we be encouraging people to be this unsafe by watching? Oh hell, let's watch the video. It's that good.