High Winds in Tornado Alley

It was June 27, 2008, and I was four years old. My mom was at a conference in California and had taken my older sibling with her to see Disneyland. I was at preschool back home in Omaha, Nebraska, and my dad came to pick me up. There was a straight line wind storm approaching from the west (the direction we were headed). We jumped in the car and got home as fast as possible. My dad got me out of the car and into the basement, where we hunkered down. Within seconds, the winds hit. They howled outside for a minute before passing. When it finished, my dad went to turn on the lights and discovered we had lost power. He looked outside and found that our neighbor’s tree had fallen on our powerlines during the storm. We had also lost the fence on our patio. For six days, we had no power – no lights, no hot water, no AC. We lost all the food in our fridge and freezer. My mom and sibling returned from California and Disneyland on the fifth day, and our power returned shortly after.

The winds during this storm peaked at about 115 mph, blowing along a path about 90 miles long and 4 to 6 miles wide (Mayes, Meyer). It began due to a cold front that started in north-central Nebraska and traveled eastward, causing less severe thunderstorms in the early afternoon, until it intensified to its full force in the early evening, over Omaha (Mayes). Golf ball sized hail accompanied the storm, and flash flooding was reported in regions north of Omaha (Mayes).

Two people were killed when a tree fell on a car, and while there were other injuries, no other fatalities were reported (Mayes). Winds damaged many homes in the Omaha area, much as they did to mine. A large outdoor concert (expecting about 50,000 people), our Summer Arts Festival, and the 2008 Olympic Swim Trials were all going on at the time, and the winds affected them all (the damage at the Summer Arts festival is shown in the images) (Mayes, Meyer).

In total,156,000 homes were without power in Omaha, and for just the second time in the history of Omaha’s power supplier, OPPD, declared a Level Two Emergency (the highest level), in part because it affected more than half the population and took more than three days to resolve (Mayes, Meyer). OPPD has reported this event as the second-largest power outage in Omaha history due to inclement weather (Meyer).

This event happened after a series of tornadoes and storms that raged across other parts of Nebraska and Iowa, mostly in late May and early July (Meyer). Although it did not produce the most fatalities, this wind storm affected the greatest area and the most people. Despite happening very fast and never creating a tornado, this storm did damage that took months to repair, making a relatively innocuous geohazard into a memorable disaster.

Works Cited

Mayes, Barbara E. A Preliminary Investigation of the 27 June 2008 Damaging Wind Event in the Omaha Metropolitan and Surrounding Areas, https://ams.confex.com/ams/23WAF19NWP/techprogram/paper_154219.htm.

Meyer, Joseph. “June 4-11, 2008: A Week of Severe Weather.” KMTV 3 News Now Omaha, Scripps Media, 5 June 2023, www.3newsnow.com/weather/weather-history/june-4-11-2008-a-week-of-severe-weather#:~:text=JUNE%2027%2C%202008%3A%20MAJOR%20WINDSTORM%20HITS%20OMAHA&text=The%20winds%20did%20damage%20to,in%20the%20Omaha%20metro%20area.