we had our worst wind storm in a couple of years blow through Omaha between 7 and 730 pm. winds were measured between 65-80 mph across most of the county, especially the western half, west of interstate 680. it was the hottest day of the summer and combined with oppressive humidity made it feel like 115 degrees outside, even though the air temp was "only" 97 degrees. the storms developed west and northwest of town and slowly strengthened until they started producing 70 mph winds about 20 miles west of town. i went out west of town down to 226th and maple. we live near 156th and maple. i left too late to get a lot of good pictures or video, and actually it was so muggy out that my lens on my camera immediately fogged up anyways the second i stepped out of the car! i was not that impressed with the structure of the storm compared to some others i've seen. normally storms that are this strong have a really nicely developed shelf cloud. as i was watching the storm come in, it was kicking up a lot of dust out in the fields several miles away. i was watching the radar, and the storm started to bow out as it was getting closer, signaling the winds were getting stronger. when the winds started to pick up at my location, i got back in the car and tried to race back home down maple street. i hit several stoplights of course, so i never really got back in front of the storm all the way. as i was driving, leaves and small branches were blowing across the road and one big gust of wind actually pushed my car over quite a bit. i made it home to the sirens blaring, which they activate if winds are forecast to be over 75 mph! i watched the storm out our windows and after the inital surge of winds that were maybe 50 mph, the winds let up. i thought this was it, but after another 4-5 minutes or so, the main damaging winds hit. winds at my place were near 70 mph i would say. my weather station on our roof blanked out, and still isn't working, so i don't know exactly what the strongest winds were. as i watched out our back door, i could see the neighbors house losing its shingles. a few small branches broke, but i was surprised how few branches there were on the ground. back west along maple street, there were a couple of large trees that blew over a few minutes after i had passed. the storm had seemed to let up a little at our house, when suddenly the power went out. it went out for not more than 5 minutes when it came back on. however, it only stayed on for another 5 minutes or so again, before going out again. this time it stayed off until after 11 pm! it was odd to notice where the power went out too. literally if you went 2 blocks north, east, or west there was power. however if you headed south, everyone was without power for quite a ways. i believe oppd said at one point there were 43, 000 people without power in its district, with 27,000 of those here in omaha. we went over to sarah's sister's house since they still had power. the backside of the storm was amazing! first there were intense cg lightning strikes. i was inside, and after hearing about the 4th or 5th loud boom, i went out to try and capture one on camera. of course the lightning really let up then. the sun then started to come out and created almost a full double rainbow. it was awesome to see, but i wasn't quite as excited as this guy in this video!! seriously watch this video, and try not to bust a gut laughing:
http://www.wimp.com/lovesrainbows/
anyways, the lighting from the sun after the storm was also awesome. here's some pics below.
here's a link to the wind gusts across the area:
http://www.crh.noaa.gov/news/display_cmsstory.php?wfo=oax&storyid=55153&source=0
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