Tornado, severe weather hit Sunland area

Daily Sun staff

A tornado touched down in Jefferson County and possible tornadic activity struck east Gage County Thursday night, while other storms caused damage throughout the Sunland area as part of a wave of severe storms and tornadoes that rolled across Nebraska Thursday evening.

Power has also been restored to about 4,000 Norris Public Power District customers who were without electricity during the storm.

A tornado touched down north of Reynolds and southwest of Fairbury at about 11:10 p.m. Thursday, causing significant damage to at least four or five homes in the area, John McKee, Jefferson County Emergency Management coordinator, said Friday morning. The tornado traveled on the northern edge of Fairbury but did not come into the city.

Luckily, there have been no reports of injuries, McKee said. Those whose homes were destroyed were accounted for and they were able to find shelter for the night.

Crews and officials in Jefferson County were already out assessing storm damage and beginning clean-up efforts, McKee said.

“Damage assessment �” we have to assess to see what we got,” he said. “Let the crews do what we can and try to keep the people out of the area so no one gets hurt and we can get things done.”

Fairbury Light and Water is working to get electricity restored to all of the Fairbury area after the entire grid was knocked out, McKee said.

In addition, a flood warning has been issued for the Little Blue River near Fairbury until Saturday evening. The river measured 14.9 feet at 3:30 a.m. Friday. Flood stage is 15 feet.

The river will be watched for the next couple of days as it has quickly risen, leaving a possibility of flooding in the lowland areas if they accumulate a lot more rain, McKee said.

East Gage County experienced tornadic and straightline winds Thursday night as at least a million dollars in damage has been reported to the area, Mark Meints, Gage County Emergency Management coordinator, said. The National Weather Service is expected to arrive sometime Friday to assess damage.

The heaviest hit places in the county were east of Beatrice near Rockford Lake east to the Pawnee and Johnson county lines, Meints said.

“Rockford Lake looks like they trimmed all the trees and dropped them to the ground,” he said.

North of Pickrell was also hit.

There were also tornado warnings in Saline County, but no reports of tornados touching down. B.J. Fictum, Saline County emergency manager, said a wall cloud dropped down four miles west of Wilbur, but went back into the clouds.

Saline County did report damage to trees, highway signs, a 15,000-bushel steel grain bin and a 20 by 40 wooden building due to the high winds that gusted to more than 70 mph around 9 p.m., according to Fictum. A semi-truck was also reported to have blown over six miles north of Tobias.

Meanwhile, power has been restored to most of the Norris Public Power District customers whose service was affected by Thursday night’s severe weather.

“We had about 4,000 customers out at the height of the storm,” Norris Manager of Public Relations and Economic Development Andrea Schafer said.

She said Norris crews went out about 10:30 p.m. Thursday and have been working through the night restoring power outages experienced in southeastern Gage County, southern Lancaster County, eastern Jefferson County and southeast Thayer County.

“The storm moved northeast across our district from the southeast Thayer County,” Schafer said.

The storm broke approximately 30 power poles across the district, she said.

Schafer said power has been restored in most of the affected areas.

“Currently, our only outages are in the Holmesville-Filley areas,” she said, with about 100 people still without power in those areas as of Friday morning.

Schafer said there’s still a lot of damage, with a lot of limbs down, and Norris crews are expected to continue working through the weekend.

“Getting down to only 100 out of 4,000 already is fantastic,” she said.

Schafer said she didn’t have an estimate on when power would be restored to those remaining homes.

“We’re working as fast as we can,” she said, by due to the high winds there are a lot of broken tree limbs that have to be cleared before the crews can move forward with getting the power restored.

The city of Beatrice experienced minor power outages in about eight to 10 areas only affecting about 12-15 customers in each area, Pat Feist, Board of Public Works electric superintendent, said.

“They were pretty small, localized,” he said. “We didn’t have any major outages.”

Elsewhere in the state, severe storms and tornadoes knocked a train off the track near Kearney, tore apart buildings at the Buffalo County Fairgrounds and blew trucks off Interstate 80 near Aurora.

Lincoln was getting its third major windstorm in a week. Numerous tree limbs and power lines were reported down and there were sizable power outages.

West of York, a dozen miles of Interstate 80 between the Hampton and Giltner exits were closed when a high-voltage power line fell across the road, said Nebraska State Patrol Lt. Dennis Leonard.

The storm blew over at least four semis, he said, but authorities received just one report of an injury; a trucker was treated for a non-life-threatening injury.

Another trucker was trapped in his semi by the power line.

In Kearney, where the first tornadoes struck around 5:20 p.m., NPPD power crews were trying to restore power to about 12,000 customers.

Gov. Dave Heineman declared a state of emergency and was expected to travel to the area Friday to survey storm damage.

“We won’t know the full extent of the damage until tomorrow, however it appears that Kearney was hardest hit and that is where our assistance will be focused overnight,” the governor said in a news release.

Early reports indicate that there are several dozen homes damaged in and around Kearney, and several more that sustained damage in the Aurora area, Heineman said.

The storm moved east along the interstate corridor, triggering tornado sightings and warnings near Grand Island, Aurora and York before weakening north of Lincoln.

Lee Enterprises and the Associated Press contributed to this report.