Storm fronts collide along Kansas-Nebraska stateline

One of the early Lady Vestey Victorian Festivals featured a battle of two giant robotic type creatures. The creatures did battle on the football field before an audience that numbered in the hundreds if not thousands.

People living or visiting along the Kansas-Nebraska Saturday afternoon had a first hand view of what happens when two powerful storm fronts collide. Powerful updrafts turn day into night, sand blasted everything that got in the way and caused considerable property damage. Here in Superior trees were blown down and limbs broken. Buildings were damaged by the hurricane force wind and pivots overturned.

Sustained wind speeds associated with the fronts topped 60 miles per hour and gusts topped 80 miles per hour.

For families with Superior High School graduates, the storm came late enough that most graduation parties were winding down. That wasn't the case for Lawrence-Nelson graduates. Their commencement exercise didn't start until 4 p.m.

Reports of precipitation received at Superior ranged from .10 to .14 of an inch. Northern Nuckolls County got both more hail and more rain.

Lawrence received the highest total. The NRD web site reported Lawrence had 2.57 inches of rain; Hastings reported various amounts, but 0.39 was close to all of them. Other reports included: Edgar: 1.94"; Blue Hill 1.91"; Nelson and Oak: 1.75" and 1.62" respectively; Deweese had 0.89" while Guide Rock had 0.35", Red Cloud 0.26 and Clay Center 0.21.

Fortunately the storm had a short life. Had it lasted longer, we would have had a lot more damage to report.

After the storm had passed and residents began the clean-up, Carrie Lemke, a member of the Superior City Council, looked at the clean-up underway at Tenth and Kansas where a downed tree blocked the street and said, "This is what makes Superior an amazing town. There are amazing neighbors and people helping clear this tree from the street! They stopped to help without even being asked."

After the gusting wind swept through about 7 p.m. Saturday evening. People came out of their houses to inspect the damage and immediately went to work to clean up the fallen tree. Soon there was someone with a chainsaw chunking up the larger limbs and a loader lifting the huge log off the street. Within a couple hours, there was little evidence of the street having been blocked.

From there the volunteers moved one block west to the corner of Tenth and Commercial, the home of Bob and Muffy Gregg. A tree limb had fallen on the house and destroyed a chimney which served the home's fireplace, but the volunteers cleared away bricks which had fallen in the yard. Sunday morning light brought into view the branch resting on the roof of the residence.

Terry and Carrie Lemke, Cliff White, Cindy Rogers, Kathy Ross, Allison and Tony White, Aaron Allgood, Kelli Going, Zeth Payton, Rick Disney, Kevin Ayers and many others whose names were not gathered were on site helping with the cleanup.

At Evergreen Cemetery, there were trees and branches lying across some of the headstones but no obvious damage seemed to be visible. One evergreen tree was totally uprooted.

For our readers with a Facebook account, here's a link to a video of the storm shot at Chester.

https://www.facebook.com/mitchell.naiman/videos/4234662606558211