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Severe hail storm hits across Nebraska with baseball-sized chunks of ice in Alliance on July 9, 2021.
Flooding, baseball-sized hail and hurricane-force wind gusts, oh my! Yes, it was a couple of very active severe weather days July 9-10. A well-forecast upper-level disturbance deepened as it moved through a stubborn ridge in the West and into the Plains. Already working along a frontal boundary, strong thunderstorms quickly developed across Nebraska Friday, July 9, and clusters of storms continued south and east through Saturday, July 10, becoming much more isolated from Texas into the Lower Mississippi Valley July 11.
Residents around Omaha, Nebraska, saw some of the strongest winds as several reports of 75 to 90 miles per hour were sent into the Storm Prediction Center late Friday night, leading to about 200,000 customers losing power.
Wind speeds that strong are equivalent to a Category 1 hurricane. Radar imagery showed an impressive and quick-moving bow echo right through town along and west of the Missouri River. Another bowing segment occurred at roughly the same time in southwest Iowa as well. More clusters provided extensive damage and strong wind gusts in central Nebraska and northeast Missouri.
Winds were not the only factor on Friday, though.
Hail, some of it as large as baseballs over 3 inches in diameter, fell in a line northwest of Des Moines, Iowa, with more of the incredibly large hail scattered around Box Butte County, Nebraska, and Hancock County, Illinois.
