Severe weather struck areas across the central plains Saturday, but in central Nebraska, very little damage has been reported.
The National Weather Service office in Hastings says small tornadoes touched down Saturday northeast of Oxford in Harlan County, west of Byron in Nuckolls County and east of Deshler in
Thayer County.
Unconfirmed tornadoes have been reported near Cook and North Platte. Those areas sustained damage to farm outbuildings and trees.
People near Spalding say they didn't expect severe weather to show up in their part of the state.
"We thought maybe it wasn't going to come this far to the west, we figured it would be further east," Dan McManaman says.
But, those predictions were a bit off.
Joan McManaman says she heard a big pop and then saw tennis ball-sized hail falling outside.
"It didn't last too terribly long, but it was very loud," Joan McManaman says.
The hail caused damage to houses and cars throughout Greeley County.
For the McManaman family, the recently replaced siding on their house has several portions missing. Daniel says he also expects they'll have to make repairs to the roof.
But National Weather Service officials say in other areas across central Nebraska, there's hardly any damage to report.
"Here in south central Nebraska, we had three EF 0s," lead forecaster Jeremy Wesely says. "They were all very brief and the damage was to out buildings and kind of outlying areas."
Wesely says the two tornadoes confirmed near North Platte also stayed far enough away from the city that they didn't cause major damage.
"People from in and around North Platte were able to see them, but they luckily missed a lot of structures," Wesely says.
The McManamans say even with the replacements they'll have to make, they still feel lucky.
"I'm just glad that it wasn't anything worse," Daniel says.
On such an active severe weather day, officials say they were expecting much more damage across central Nebraska, but they say it all comes down to luck on where the storms decide to go.
