Severe storms that popped-up in southeastern Nebraska Thursday evening didn’t take long to affect the atmosphere in southwest Iowa. Storm warnings for parts of the listening area were issued at around 6:40-p.m.  Motorists began pulling under bridge overpasses along Interstate 29 near Council Bluffs, as the area was hit by heavy rain and hail. At about that same time, the National Weather Service in Valley, NE, issued a Tornado Watch for four counties in  the southwest corner of the state.

Storms continued to build and move eastward, until they began to form and move northeast into Cass County just after 7-p.m.  At around 7:25-p.m., a Severe Thunderstorm warning was issued for parts of Cass and Audubon Counties. The storms moved through Griswold and Atlantic, dumping heavy rain. Here at the KJAN studios, we received a total of .88″ of an inch of rain, with most of that having fallen between 7-and 9-pm.

Pea-sized hail was observed just a  few miles south and northeast of Atlantic as the storms passed through, but further off to the southwest, near Griswold, quarter-sized hail was reported at 8:10-p.m. by a trained weather service spotter.  About 15-minutes earlier, another spotter reported golf ball-sized hail reported 4-miles northeast of Griswold .

Other reports of hail included  quarter-sized hail one-mile north of Braddyville in Page County at around 8:40-p.m.   There were no  immediate reports of damage. Just when it appeared the storms had died down near 9-p.m. and were moving out of the listening area, the National Weather Service issued a Severe Thunderstorm Watch for those counties mainly south of Interstate 80 until 2-a.m., but most of the storms weakened significantly prior to the watch having expired.