Severe storms and tornadoes hammered parts of the Plains on Sunday night, and Nebraska was at the center of it. A tornado emergency was declared for Hebron and surrounding areas as a large tornado was believed to be hitting the town.
The National Weather Service said the emergency covered some 1,700 residents, and described the situation as very likely to involve a large tornado. Even so, reports of serious damage in Hebron had not yet materialized by the latest update. In Palmer, about an hour earlier, a huge tornado struck near the town in central Nebraska, where storm chasers said two people were rescued from the rubble of a home. No deaths had been confirmed there.
Storm chasers also documented severe damage to structures near Palmer after the tornado was in progress, and the weather service issued a particularly dangerous situation tornado warning for the area. The warning reflected a broader severe weather outbreak that was not confined to one storm line or one county. It stretched across parts of the Plains and was expected to keep evolving into Monday.
That next round was forecast to peak Monday in the Central Plains and mid-Mississippi Valley, where forecasters said the chance of severe storms was higher and the tornado threat reached a level 2 of 3 intensity rating. EF3 and stronger tornadoes were possible there, with Kansas City and Omaha, Nebraska, both near the at-risk area. The threat was being driven by supercell thunderstorms forming in unstable, moist air ahead of a cold front, with the most dangerous window expected from sunset through midnight.
Elsewhere, more than half a million people in parts of northern Iowa and southern Minnesota were under tornado threat until 1 a.m. CDT, with strong tornadoes possible after sunset. Near Tripp, South Dakota, a severe storm damaged outbuildings on a farm and flipped a camper. Farther east, damage to barns was reported near the Wisconsin towns of Hayton and Chilton.
Michigan also faced a separate risk area, though the likelihood of tornadoes there was lower. Even there, forecasters said EF2 or stronger tornadoes were still possible, with the threat peaking late in the afternoon through the evening. The pattern showed how wide the outbreak had become: not a single isolated tornado, but a multi-day system that could keep producing dangerous storms across a broad stretch of the Midwest.
For Nebraska, the key question now is not whether the storm threat has passed, but how much more damage the next round of storms will add before the outbreak eases.
