The record
Everything the slot carries, as measured. Series arrays are drawn above and listed here in full.
| Event typeevent_type | Heavy Rain |
|---|---|
| NOAA NCEI event IDncei_event_id | 520,167 |
| Episode IDepisode_id | 85,187 |
| Begin UTCbegin_utc | 2014-06-04T01:30:00+00:00 |
| End UTCend_utc | 2014-06-04T12:00:00+00:00 |
| Statestate | NEBRASKA |
| County/zone typecz_type | C |
| County/zone namecz_name | POLK |
| Latitudelat | 41.209 |
| Longitudelon | -97.460 |
| End latitudeend_lat | 41.209 |
| End longitudeend_lon | -97.460 |
| Deaths directdeaths_direct | 0 |
| Deaths indirectdeaths_indirect | 0 |
| Injuries directinjuries_direct | 0 |
| Injuries indirectinjuries_indirect | 0 |
| Damage propertydamage_property | 0.00K |
| Damage cropsdamage_crops | 0.00K |
| Weather forecast office sourcewfo_source | Trained Spotter |
| Episode narrativeepisode_narrative | For roughly the northeast half of this 24-county South Central Nebraska area, this late Tuesday afternoon and evening featured one of the most widespread severe weather events of the 2014 convective season. In essence, three separate waves of primarily outflow-dominant convection rolled across the area along a west-northwest to east-southeast path over the course of several hours, resulting in dozens of reports of large hail and damaging winds, along with three fairly brief tornadoes, two rated EF0 and one EF1. There was a notably sharp cutoff in severe thunderstorm activity within South Central Nebraska, as nearly all storms concentrated northeast of a line from roughly Litchfield-Hastings-Geneva, while most locations southwest of this line did not even observe a single raindrop. Starting with the three tornadoes, the first two were brief, EF0 touchdowns that occurred in far northern Valley and north central Greeley counties during the 415-515 pm CDT time frame, and were associated with the first supercell storm of the event that tracked into the local area from the west-northwest. These tornadoes produced little if any direct damage. The third confirmed tornado of the event was a bit more significant, and occurred several hours later after dark, around 1030 pm CDT in eastern Hamilton County north of Hampton. This EF1 tornado struck two homes, blowing a portion of the roof off of one of them. As for large hail, there were several reports of stones up to around golf ball size in places such as Spalding, Osceola, Arcadia, York, McCool Junction and Exeter. Many places were hit with more than one round of hail, including York, where golf ball size hail first fell around 830 pm CDT and then again around 11 pm CDT. In many cases, hail was accompanied by severe outflow winds of generally 60-80 MPH, resulting in broken windows and siding damage to several structures, along with tree damage. As just a few specific examples of wind reports and damage: Ord airport measured a 79 MPH gust, a rural residence four miles northeast of Scotia sustained considerable damage to outbuildings along with broken house windows, and a grocery store in Wolbach had its roof peeled back. In addition to damaging winds directly associated with severe storms, places farther south near the Highway 6 corridor, including Hastings, observed the passage of a notably strong, southward-surging outflow boundary around 8 pm CDT that produced measured 70+ MPH winds and significant blowing dust. At the time this outflow plowed through Hastings, the nearest precipitation associated with actual thunderstorms was at least 15-20 miles off to the north-northeast. As for event-total rainfall, most of the affected areas tallied somewhere between 1-3, although localized higher amounts occurred mainly in Nance and Polk counties, including NeRAIN observer totals of 3.70 two miles west-northwest of Shelby and 3.68 seven miles north of Osceola. ||Taking a closer look at severe weather timing, the morning actually started out with a cluster of strong storms that rumbled through many of the same northern counties that would later see the main event. These early-day storms produced nickel size hail in Arcadia, but by 930 am CDT all morning activity had exited South Central Nebraska, kicking off a multi-hour lull. Then, generally between 430-630 pm CDT, round 1 of severe storms, anchored by an outflow-dominant supercell that produced the EF0 tornadoes, raked across mainly the far northern and northeastern fringes of the local area before exiting into eastern Nebraska. Around the time round 1 was exiting stage right, round 2 of severe storms entered Valley and Greeley counties from the northwest between 6-7 pm CDT and tracked east-southeast for the next few hours before exiting the eastern York County area around 9 pm CDT. Following a very similar theme, round 3 of severe storms initially intensified over the Valley/Sherman counties area between 830-930 pm CDT, and proceeded to pass east-southeast over many of the same areas as the previous round. However this final cluster of fairly fast-moving severe storms slipped a touch farther southeast, affecting more of the Fillmore County area before exiting into eastern Nebraska around 1230 am CDT on the 4th. Although a few non-severe storms lingered a bit later near the Interstate 80 corridor, essentially all of South Central Nebraska was finally storm-free by 230 am CDT.||On the mid-upper level synoptic scale, the main trigger for this event was an energetic, although fairly-low amplitude shortwave trough that raced out of the Intermountain West and into the Central Plains. A corresponding westerly mid-level speed max of around 60-70 knots at 500 millibars accompanied this wave, which combined with steepening mid level lapse rates and surface dewpoints generally in the low-mid 60s F to yield a fairly volatile late afternoon/early evening mesoscale environment featuring around 2000-3000 J/kg mixed-layer CAPE and a notable 60-70 knots of 0-6 kilometer deep layer shear. Low level shear and storm-relative helicity also became quite pronounced in the vicinity of a fairly sharp surface warm front that became quasi-stationary through much of the day and evening along an axis through northwest-central-southeast Nebraska. Despite the considerable severe weather that occurred, there were indications leading up to the event that it could have been worse. For one thing, the mesoscale environment was initially supportive of more destructive, longer-track tornadoes, but this threat steadily diminished as most storms quickly became outflow-dominant and generated a larger-scale cold pool. Secondly, the areal coverage of severe storms was not as widespread as it could have been, as a mid level capping inversion south of the strong warm front spared most of the southwest half of the local area from observing any convection. At any rate, this severe weather event was well-anticipated at least a few days in advance at both the local WFO level as well as by the Storm Prediction Center, which already placed most of South Central Nebraska in a Moderate Risk on the Day 2 outlooks 24-48 hours in advance and maintained/refined the Moderate Risk area into the Day 1 period. |
| Event narrativeevent_narrative | A 24 hour rain total of 3.70 inches fell from mid-evening through the overnight at an NeRAIN site, two miles west-northwest of Shelby. |
| Yearyear | 2,014 |
Provenance
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Storage: spine