Wakefield Weather Forecast 21 Days

[Jan Dominquez]

NightA chance of showers before midnight, then a chance of showers and thunderstorms between midnight and 1am, then showers likely and possibly a thunderstorm after 1am. Cloudy, with a low around 66. North wind 5 to 10 mph. Chance of precipitation is 70%. New rainfall amounts between a tenth and quarter of an inch, except higher amounts possible in thunderstorms.

Wakefield Massachusetts weather forecast for five days. 2008-2024 LocalConditions.com. All Rights Reserved. Terms of Service Privacy Policy Cookies Consent Preferences Do Not Sell My Personal Information

When you think of Nebraska tornadoes, what comes to mind? Is it the Omaha tornado of 1975? The "Night of the Twisters" in Grand Island in 1980? The Hallam Tornado? Alongside those famous ones, there is another more recent tornado outbreak that might have popped up, the Pilger tornadoes of 2014.

On the afternoon of June 16, 2014, four violent tornadoes tore paths across Stanton, Cuming, and Wayne Counties. The event is most famous in the meteorology world for its famed "twin tornadoes" which is almost unheard of. One supercell was responsible for spawning four violent tornadoes, oftentimes alongside one another.

For the residents of Pilger and the surrounding countryside, June 16 2014 won't be a day soon forgotten. So, in this installment of This Week in Weather History, we go to the recent past to look back at the tornado swarm around Pilger.

In 1874, John Peter Pilger purchased 160 acres of land in eastern Stanton County along the Elkhorn River and along the conjunction with Humbug Creek. Pilger owned the land for five years before selling it in 1879 to the Fremont, Elkhorn, and Missouri Valley railroad. A depot was established in September 1879, and slowly the settlement began around it. The town was known as "Canton" until it the post office was established in July 1884, naming the community after its founder, Pilger. The village of Pilger became incorporated in 1887. In 2014, Pilger was 127 years old, and boasted a population of 352 as of the 2010 census.

Pilger is roughly a 90-minute drive from Omaha. Located in Stanton County, Pilger is one of two communities in the county, the other being the county seat of Stanton. Pilger sits a half mile south of the intersection of Nebraska Highway 15 and US Highway 275. Highway 15 runs along the west side of town, the main route to get to the nearby towns of Stanton and Wisner along Highway 275.

Pilger and northeast Nebraska are not strangers to tornadoes or severe weather. Older generations of the Pilger area remember when a tornado swept through the nearby countryside on June 17, 1954. More recently, the region had a near miss when an EF-4 tornado struck Wayne on October 4, 2013. Just two weeks prior to June 16th, on June 3rd, baseball size hail alongside 70mph winds caused substantial damage in Stanton and Cuming Counties. When the tornadoes went through on June 16, many residents had just repaired roofs, siding, and windows due to the hail.

June 16 was prime for severe weather, including tornadoes. That morning, a cluster of storms moved through eastern Nebraska ahead of a warm front. These storms dropped very large hail north of Lincoln and in the Omaha metro, where hail upwards of 2" was reported. Once they passed through that morning, they left an atmosphere unstable.

At the National Weather Service office in Omaha, a special weather balloon was launched at 1 p.m. to attempt to get a sample of the atmosphere. The data it brought back worried them greatly. "Oh my..." was the response of one of the meteorologists to the weather balloon data. Most of the parameters for severe weather were off the charts for northeastern Nebraska.

The "supercell composite" is a parameter used by forecasters that takes in data from several ingredients to show a number. Generally, any value over three is sufficient for supercells, with numbers anywhere between 10-30 very conducive. The supercell composite parameter was in the 40s, with some values as high as 60!

Likewise, the "Significant Tornado Parameter" is another product used to assess the atmosphere for the capability of producing significant tornadoes (greater than EF-2). Anything over one is deemed sufficient, but on June 16 the values were over 10.

Due to the severe weather environment being prime, the forecasters at the Storm Prediction Center issued strong wording which focused on northeast Nebraska. In their severe weather outlook, they said:

As things evolved, a Tornado Watch was issued. However, it was not just any watch, but a Particularly Dangerous Situation tornado watch. A PDS tornado watch, for short, is rarely issued where the ingredients for a strong tornado appear likely. To put this in context, a PDS tornado watch has not been issued for eastern Nebraska or western Iowa since then.

As the Tornado Watch was being issued, one lone supercell thunderstorm developed over Platte and Madison Counties. It quickly went severe, producing 1" hail in Madison. Then as the storm crossed into Stanton County, it became tornadic. The next two hours saw the tornado drop not one, not two, not three, but four violent tornadoes in a short span of time.

Pilger is most famous for the "twin tornadoes" that it produced. Although one storm producing multiple tornadoes at once is not uncommon, typically there is one strong tornado and one weak one, known as a "satellite tornado." What made Pilger unique was both tornadoes were separate from one another and both were violent, something that has hardly ever, if at all, been documented.

After producing a weak EF-0 east of Madison, the first violent tornado of the day touched down southwest of Stanton. The tornado originally did weaker damage to trees and powerlines southwest of Stanton. It's only when the tornado crosses over Highway 24, just two miles west of the county seat, that it creates its first area of significant damage. It was there that a group of farmsteads suffered significant damage from the tornado, although no one inside was hurt.

The tornado then skimmed past Lake Maskenthine, north of Stanton, ever-increasing in its intensity. As the tornado approached Highway 275, it demolished its first home. Nothing but the basement remained of the home, but the occupants taking shelter were unharmed.

The two vehicles at the home, one car and one truck were lofted by the tornado. The car sailed over a quarter mile before landing in a crumpled heap. The property where the car originated, sits in the distant background.

The tornado barrelled across Highway 275, inflicting complete destruction on two more homes north of the highway. Like the previous home, only the basement remained. The residents in the homes took shelter in their basements and all survived uninjured as the tornado roped out a short distance from the homes.

As storm chasers watched the Stanton tornado lift north of Highway 275, their attention was immediately focused to the east as a new area of rotation began forming just east of Stanton. Within minutes, another tornado touched down, this time east of Stanton. The tornado first took aim at the gravel pit and lake southwest of Pilger, where the flower shop was destroyed. One man rode out the storm in a barge on the lake, and was unhurt. The tornado grazed by a new housing development on the lake and continued northeastward towards Pilger.

Storm chasers watched in horror as the tornado smashed into Pilger. Videos of the tornado show the Pilger water tower loom ominously as debris gets torn up in tornadoes. Those watching the chaser livestreams, the Weather Channel, or local news saw Pilger get hit in real-time. For the residents of town, it was 81 seconds they would never forget.

Pilger Fire Chief Kory Koehlmoos was about ready to leave Pilger for Stanton when the call came out for assistance for the Stanton tornado victims. Right as he was leaving town, he noticed a funnel cloud heading for Pilger. Power was out in town, so the outdoor warning siren was not sounding, it needed to be activated manually. He turned back around, risking his life, and turned on the siren. People who were originally outside watching the storm began moving for shelter in town as the tornado approached. The sound of the siren continued to wail before abruptly cutting off as the tornado destroyed it.

The tornado entered the southwest side of Pilger, where a feed store and an RV were completely destroyed. As the tornado moved into the block of homes along Elm Street. It did violent EF-4 damage wiping many homes completely off of their foundations.

North of Elm St sits the Farmers Co-op building, alongside the Pilger Store. Several people were in the Pilger store when the sirens sounded and got into the cooler of the store. After hearing a loud pop they realized the roof went, as is shown in security camera footage. They hunkered down in the cooler until the tornado passed. The Pilger Store had suffered intense damage. The grain bins which sit in the center of town were crumpled and destroyed, the contents of them sitting in huge piles in the center of town.

To the north of the Pilger Store is Main Street, where the business district of Pilger lies. On the southwest corner of the district sits Midwest Bank. Bank President Gene Willers was paying attention to the weather that afternoon, and when he heard the alarms he ushered his employees into the bank vault. After a robbery of the bank in 1998, air-holes were drilled in along with a pre-paid cell phone. Willers remained outside the vault to open it once the tornado passed and took shelter in the crawlspace of the bank. The tornado hit the bank, causing significant damage. Willers, uninjured, went up to release the also uninjured occupants from the vault. After a brief scare with a second tornado forcing them to take shelter again, all the bank employees were okay.

Tragically, it was across the street where the Pilger tornado took its one and only life in town. A trailer sat on Main Street, home to a mother and her two children. The three attempted to run across the street to safety when the tornado hit, throwing the three in all directions. The mother suffered extensive injuries. Her 5-year-old daughter, Calista Dixon, was killed.

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