Blizzard warning in effect for much of Nebraska

Warm temperatures earlier this week were replaced with a blizzard warning Wednesday for much of Nebraska.

Interstate 80 was closed both directions between North Platte and Lincoln, as well as a stretch near Gretna, due to winter weather. Many schools, churches and businesses were closed throughout central and eastern Nebraska.

Meteorologists expected up to 70 mph wind gusts and anywhere from 2-10 inches of snow on Wednesday. For central Nebraska, a blizzard warning was placed in effect until 2 p.m. CT 10 p.m. for eastern Nebraska.

Phil Beda, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service Hastings office, advised people to only travel if necessary.

In Grand Island, the Police Department posted on social media that power lines were down all over the city, traffic lights were not functioning and stalled vehicles were in the roadways.

Northeast Nebraska is projected to get hit with the most snow, with Tekemah getting up to 10 inches. The central part of the state could get 4-9 inches of snow.

There were an estimated 120,000 outages across the state between Omaha Public Power District, Lincoln Electric System, Norris Public Power and Nebraska Public Power District.

Lincoln Electric System's outage map showed more than 1,000 customers across the city were without power Wednesday morning.

In an update, the city of Lincoln shared that a high wind warning was in effect until 7 p.m. Wednesday and a blizzard warning was in effect until 10 p.m. Wednesday. Streets were mostly dry at around 5 a.m., with the weather expected to transition from rain, to sleet to snow throughout the morning.

Nebraska Public Power District issued an update saying several Nebraska communities were without power.

“The whiteout blizzard conditions are very hazardous right now for our crews needing to travel to outages or get up in bucket trucks, and has limited our crews ability to safely respond to outages,” the statement said. “As conditions improve in each of the impacted areas, our crews will work to restore impacted customers.”

Customers experiencing outages can report them to NPPD at 1-877-ASK-NPPD or through its NPPD on the Go mobile app.

Customer outages as of 9:30 a.m. included:

• York: 3,341
• Aurora: 2,533
• Geneva: 1,025
• Dakota City: 970
• Kearney: 730
• Milford: 591
• Gibbon: 454
• Oakland: 423
• Homer: 156
• Winnebago: 53
• Shelton: 19
• Tekamah: 9

At the peak of the storm, NPPD had over 11,000 customers without power. As of 5 p.m. Wednesday that number was down to around 6,500.