From the polar vortex to wildfires and flooding, Nebraska residents got another taste in 2021 of the potent consequences of the state’s naturally extreme weather in a climate-changed world.
Indeed, the year was bookended by firsts: February brought the state’s first rolling blackouts as a result of record cold, and December brought that month’s first derecho anywhere in the nation and Nebraska’s first tornado swarm in the final month of the year.
The full extent of the year’s damaging weather will never be known since no agency keeps a tally. Known losses from the two storms with available data exceed $60 million.
“Natural†weather exists side-by-side with the influence of climate change, said Martha Shulski, Nebraska’s state climatologist. “The question one should ask is how much worse an extreme weather event was made due to climate change,†she said.
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As can be expected in a warmer world, a long wildfire season taxed the state’s firefighters. And because the planet has more moisture in its atmosphere, it wasn’t surprising to see a number of moisture-intense storms. Additionally, the region continued to see warming nights, another hallmark of climate change, because nighttime is warming faster than daytime.
“Because climate change is real and here now, it is impacting us in these various ways,†Shulski said. “Sometimes the signal is strong and sometimes not.â€
Over the last 10 years, the weather affecting Nebraska has swung from one extreme to the other. In 2011, Nebraska saw historic flooding on the Missouri River, followed the next year by the state’s hottest, driest year on record, followed by a string of wet years culminating in the catastrophic flooding of 2019.
Nebraska also is seeing the same lopsided setting of temperature records that is occurring elsewhere.
In spite of a bitterly cold February, Nebraska experienced its 17th-warmest year through November, Shulski said. Records have been kept for 127 years.
The ranking jumps noticeably when it comes to “warm low†temperatures (typically nighttime temperatures). Nebraska had its eighth-warmest year in that category, according to the National Centers for Environmental Information. Warm nights are a marker of climate change. They add to heat stress during hot summers because nights are when plants, animals and cities cool off.
Warm nights caught the eye of National Weather Service meteorologist Mike Moritz of Hastings. He said the year was averaging Grand Island’s fourth-warmest low temperature through Dec. 26.
Through Dec. 26, Omaha was on pace to record its fifth-warmest year out of the last 100, said Taylor Nicolaisen, meteorologist with the National Weather Service.
Here, in chronological order, are some of the big weather events of 2021 in Nebraska.
January snowstorm: With 14.5 inches of snow, Lincoln saw its second-snowiest day on record Jan. 25 when a major winter storm swept across the state. Omaha recorded 11.9 inches of snow.
During the storm and the days that followed, the Nebraska State Patrol responded to more than 600 weather-related incidents, including 53 crashes. The storm served as a reminder that COVID-19 has changed the nature of snow days for Nebraska students. Many schools canceled in-person classes but continued instruction online, rather than give kids the day off.
Frozen February: Temperature records fell when bitterly cold Arctic air plunged as far south as Mexico. The debilitating freeze led to rolling blackouts in states such as Nebraska and a destructive power outage in Texas.
For Nebraska, the month exemplified a worrisome trend of recent decades, which has been to experience a particularly harsh end to winter (a key factor in the rolling blackouts and the 2019 flood). Shulski said research is under way to understand the cause, but signs point to a connection with Arctic warming.
During the first two weeks of February, nearly 250 cold weather records were set or matched in Nebraska at the approximately 2,600 sites where such data is logged. Schools closed, batteries froze and furnaces and furnace repair companies went into overdrive.
It was the state’s sixth-coldest February.
Among the records:
* Ericson and Albion set February records with a low of minus 35 degrees.
* Lincoln’s low of minus 31 on Feb. 16 set a daily record.
* Hastings tied its monthly record with a low of minus 30.
* Omaha set its monthly record with a low of minus 23.
instituted power outages over two days. In Omaha Public Power District’s 13-county territory of Southeast Nebraska, a total of 80,596 customers were without power for one to two hours at some point from Feb. 15-17.
(OPPD, in its 75-year history, had no record of employing a blackout. Nebraska Public Power District instituted one for about an hour in north-central Nebraska in July 2012 when extreme drought led to a spike in irrigation usage.)
March bl A monster storm roared across the Plains in mid-March, spinning a blizzard into Wyoming and western Nebraska and delivering record rain to the eastern side of Nebraska. One stretch after another of Interstate 80 closed as the snowy highway became impassable and communities became clogged with stranded travelers. In eastern Nebraska, Lincoln set a record for wettest March day with 2.33 inches in precipitation. Omaha set a daily record with 2.58 inches.
All of Nebraska had entered 2021 in drought or near-drought. The March rains were part of a wet couple of months that brought an end to drought across much of the state, though drought continued to be a problem in the Panhandle.
Long, hard fire season: At least four times during 2021, Gov. Pete Ricketts declared wildfire emergencies. The first came in June with the Brush Creek fire in north-central Nebraska and the final one in November with the Buffalo Creek fire in the Panhandle.
Other large fires this year included the Hackberry Fire in August in the Panhandle, which was fueled in part by winds of 50 mph to 70 mph, and the .
Drought in the Panhandle contributed to the fires, and the state’s wildfire experts say it’s possible as the state becomes hotter and drier.
Historic windstorm: Hurricane-strength winds swept through Nebraska July 9-10, cutting off power to more than one-third of the state, including a record 188,000 OPPD customers. Winds reached 96 mph at Eppley Airfield, matching the record for the Omaha metro. President Joe Biden approved a disaster declaration for Nebraska after the storm. A partial survey of damage from the storm tallied losses at $30 million.
Destructive flash flood: On Aug 7, rain fell hard and fast over the Omaha metro area, and flash flooding filled the basements of homes and businesses in low-lying areas, knocking out the foundations of at least two homes. Seven people were rescued after being trapped in chest-high water when their elevators descended into the flooded basement of a downtown Omaha apartment building.
The flooding was caused by the rapid rate of rainfall, not the total amount. Only about 2 inches fell, but it fell at a rate of 2 to 4 inches an hour, according to the National Weather Service.
Unprecedented December tornadoes: Nebraska has been in a tornado lull for the last several years, Moritz said, and until December, this year was no different.
Through November, Nebraska had recorded 16 tornadoes, far shy of the annual average of 51, Moritz said.
The impact of climate change on tornadoes is unclear. But the stage for the December outbreak was set by an unusually warm autumn — the third-warmest on record in the lower 48 states. And the Dec. 15 trigger was a surge of atmospheric energy in the form of abnormally warm moist air flowing into Nebraska and Iowa from an unusually warm Gulf of Mexico. (Lincoln saw its second-warmest December temperature ever when the high reached 74 degrees.)
A. Nebraska’s largest agricultural insurer said the storm generated its largest losses on record for December. Farmers Mutual of Nebraska says losses may hit $30 million.
The potent weather system also generated the nation’s first-ever December derecho, which is a long-lived, damaging straight-line windstorm. Winds of up to 100 mph swept 650 miles across the country, from Kansas to Wisconsin.
State-level disaster declarations have been issued in Iowa and Nebraska.