'Breakneck pace': Nebraska sees increasing number of costly high-wind events

An old saying says March often “comes in like a lion.” But this March was more like a huffing and puffing wolf, blowing a lot of stuff down.

March is known to be windy in Nebraska – typically the second-windiest month on average behind April, according to National Weather Service meteorologist Taylor Nicolaisen.

“Spring brings some of the greatest temperature differences across the country, with the South warming up quickly under the powerful Spring sunshine and some areas up north still buried under snow,” Nicolaisen said. “That wind is trying to even things out and equalize the pressure and temperature of the air masses.”

In fact, March 2025 set some of the windiest and costliest records in Nebraska history, continuing an escalating trend of expensive and damaging weather in Nebraska. Data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) shows the state isn’t alone, with most of the country recording sustained wind speeds above historical averages in March.

The National Weather Service issued 22 high wind warnings for Nebraska counties last month, a record for the state. A high wind warning is issued when winds are either blowing at 40 mph for a sustained period or gusting up to 58 mph.

“We’re only a fourth of the way through the year, and we’ve already tied the number of high wind warnings that we set last year,” Nicolaisen said. “We’re already at a breakneck pace, and we still have another eight months to go.”

Last month, Lincoln recorded three days with maximum wind gusts reaching at least 60 mph, a record for the Capital City for March. The previous high was two days in 1996. When Nicolaisen looked at data from the past 50 years, he saw Lincoln had only recorded seven instances of 60 mph wind gusts. Three of those seven occurred last month. In addition, it was the fifth March in a row that Lincoln has recorded above-normal wind speeds.

Costly and destructive damage

The National Weather Service was able to forecast several significant wind-related storm days in advance, giving property owners and utility customers warnings ahead of the damaging storms.

“Snow is notoriously difficult. Fog is difficult,” Nicolaisen said. “Wind, a lot of the time, we can see coming four or five days out. Maybe not thunderstorm winds exactly, but big low pressure systems and cold fronts are pretty easy to nail down. They’re big, big patterns.”

The forecasting and the public alerts were pivotal to protecting people and their property ahead of time, Nicolaisen said, especially when it comes to storms that carry cold northerly winds.

“They’re a lot stronger, and they’ll undercut things. They have a lot more momentum. They have a lot more force with them,” Nicolaisen said. “That cold air is just dense and heavy, and it just comes smashing right at the surface.”

And smash they did. Last month set a new March high for storm damage reports in Nebraska with 46 submitted to the National Weather Service. The previous record for the month was 29 reports in March 2006.

Some of the damage reports stemmed from Nebraska’s mid-March blizzard that brought winds exceeding 70 mph, damaged more than 1,700 power poles and shut down Interstate 80 between Iowa and Wyoming. In a letter to President Donald Trump that requested a major disaster declaration, Nebraska Gov. Jim Pillen labeled the storm “one of the most destructive winter weather events to impact Nebraska in recent history.”

The state estimated the blizzard left behind nearly $65 million in damage, with most of the destruction affecting utility infrastructure. More than 200,000 people, mostly in eastern Nebraska, were in the dark during the peak of power outages.

Half of those outages were on the Omaha Public Power District’s grid. The company recorded 106,000 total outages from the March 19 blizzard, which was one of three weather-induced outages last month, said OPPD’s Director of Grid Operations Chris Angland.

“The damage to our infrastructure was the most we had ever seen,” Angland said. “Extremely high wind, coupled with a 500-year ice event. We saw far more icing up of our lines than we had seen in recent history. We saw lines come down. We saw poles snap. It was a lot of stress added to our distribution system.”

The power company estimated damage costs totaled somewhere between $30 million and $35 million in its request to FEMA for reimbursements.

Angland said the March blizzard was comparable to OPPD’s largest storm in company history – a windstorm last July that brought hurricane-force winds to the Omaha metro area and cut power to 220,000 people. It was the most outages OPPD had in its history.

But while the July storm had the most outages, the March 19 blizzard caused far more infrastructure destruction across OPPD’s grid. For example, following last month’s blizzard, OPPD crews replaced more than 1,500 utility poles – three-and-a-half times more than the July 2024 storm. Angland said the blizzard took out more than 70 transmission structures – five times more than the July storm.

Some of OPPD’s customers were without power for as long as eight days after the March storm. Areas in OPPD’s northwestern grid, such as Ceresco, North Bend and Cedar Bluffs, took a straight shot from the strong winds, leaving many rural areas far more impacted than the city of Omaha. Angland said rural residents typically have slower restorations because fewer customers are tied into each power pole or transformer, whereas restorations in urban, more-densely populated parts of Omaha may bring back power to larger blocks of customers.

“Many reports from very seasoned line workers said they’ve never seen damage like this before – miles and miles of poles lying on the ground, conductors lying on the ground,” Angland said. “It was the type of damage where we had to replace a lot of large sections of those circuits.”

It was a similar scene in southeast Nebraska, according to Trevor Wehrer, the manager of operations and safety at Norris Public Power District. Most of NPPD’s 29,000 customers are rural residents. The storm knocked out power to a good portion of the power company’s grid, leaving about 17,000 customers in the dark.

“In my 30 years, this was the worst one I’ve ever seen. I’ve never seen that many poles on the ground,” Wehrer said. “We were working 16-plus hour days trying to get the poles back in the ground so we could get people’s power back on.”

Some of the biggest damage in Norris’s area was in Seward, where many power poles were in open areas and more susceptible to being knocked down from the high winds and heavy ice.

Wehrer said 95 linemen were called in to help Norris restore power in the following days. Both Wehrer and Angland said mutual aid crews were a big help in restoring power quicklier.

OPPD had response help for the March 19 blizzard from utility workers from Kansas, Arkansas, Wisconsin, Oklahoma, Iowa and Missouri. Angland said those partnerships will be increasingly important in the future.

“We understand that when we get into these large events, to be able to react more quickly and to be able to work more efficiently, we need help,” Angland said. “We have those relationships in place.”

As for hardening infrastructure for more windy events, the power companies alluded to several options for increasing and more powerful windy weather.

Angland said OPPD is prepared to handle an increasing number of damaging storms, thanks to annual drills, maintenance inspections, vegetation management, proactive equipment repair and replacement, as well as calling early for mutual aid.

Wehrer said Norris is utilizing stronger power poles that can’t be blown over as easily, as well as using more heavy-duty equipment and protection. But burying lines isn’t an option for the rural power company due to the cost.

Dry, dusty effects from windy weather

The recent wild and windy weather patterns show the trend is only ramping up, according to agricultural meteorologist Eric Hunt. He said stronger areas of low pressure in the spring are helping drive higher wind speeds.

“We are getting warmer temperatures more quickly, particularly in lower latitudes in the U.S., and to a certain degree, we’re getting warmer temperatures even here,” Hunt said. “And that’s leading to stronger jet streams.”

It’s a change that Hunt said will become increasingly important to examine. He said the higher wind gusts and overall windy patterns could lead to other negative effects over time.

“It would be nice to actually conduct a study to see exactly how much impact just the wind alone is having on drying out surfaces,” Hunt said. “I’ve been getting a lot of comments from [Nebraska] Extension educators and other producers out in the state, especially in areas where it’s been relatively dry at times, and their vegetation, their cover crops or pastures are in very bad shape – worse shape than you would expect given just the precipitation numbers.”

Hunt’s hunch is Nebraska’s windy weather could be causing soil to rapidly lose its moisture, since wind speed helps drive evaporation.

“Not necessarily because of warmer temperatures or a dry stretch without precipitation, but a dry stretch, plus some warmer days and a lot of wind can make a big difference.”

Another marker Hunt wants to monitor is the frequency at which dust is being lofted well above the surface in places like New Mexico and Texas. After snow melted from the March 19 storm, many Nebraskans found red dust caked to their cars, their homes and their sidewalks. It turned out that dust was kicked up from the southwestern part of the U.S.

“Dust particles tend to help suppress precipitation,” Hunt said. “That’s one of the reasons that you probably saw the whole middle of the country, and a lot of the continent for that matter, go over so dry in the 1930s. The Dust Bowl certainly helped. You had an initial condition get worse, and then the land started blowing, and the initial dust started kicking up, and that helps it change even further.”

Whether there’s a correlation between the increases in windy weather and drought conditions remains to be seen. But Hunt is pretty confident that windy patterns will continue, if not increase. And if his predictions hold true, Nebraskans could see more damaging and destructive wind damage in the years ahead.