The tornado that touched down in west-central Nebraska apparently didn’t hit anything, but hail spawned by the same storm system shredded crops and shattered windows, authorities said Saturday.
John Springer, a forecaster for the National Weather Service in North Platte, said the tornado was seen by a trained spotter about seven miles south of Sutherland at 7:18 CDT on Friday, “but as far as we know it didn’t hit anything.”
The hail did.
“About 20 after 7 a wall cloud came through,” said Kim Hongsemeier, 42, whose family lives on 25 acres about a mile and a half north of Sutherland, which is about 20 miles west of North Platte.
“We had golf ball-size hail, and it took out all the windows on the north side of the house and it put holes through the garage doors,” she said.
“It was very scary. I never heard anything quite so loud as that,” said Hongsemeier, although the family is well-acquainted with severe storms. “Back in 1990 we lost a roof to a tornado,” she said.
A team from the weather service surveyed damages Saturday morning and found windows broken out, holes in siding and tree leaves and small branches down, said meteorologist Angela Oder.
High winds drove the hail horizontally into houses, she said.
Jim Nitz, emergency management director for Lincoln County, on Saturday morning drove around to assess the damage.
“North and east of Sutherland the corn crop is pretty well shredded,” he said, and several residences were missing windows.
He’d heard no reports of injuries.
“We had an awful lot of warning from the weather service,” Nitz said. “The storm originated two or three counties north of us, and they just kept up the tornado warnings. That kept people inside and kept them safe.”
He said the damage was concentrated in an eight- to 10-square-mile area north and east of Sutherland but that it was too early to estimate the toll in dollars.
The storms started building about 4:30 p.m., and the tornado warnings included Hooker, Lincoln and McPherson counties.
Forecaster Springer said there were no estimates yet on the winds that drove the hail so fiercely. Rainfall totals ranged from a half-inch to an inch around the area, he said.
The area’s weekend forecast called for clear and hot weather Sunday, with a slight chance of thunderstorms Sunday evening.
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Associated Press Writer Anna Jo Bratton contributed to this report.
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