Brunt of snow misses Omaha

Omahans, put the snow shovels and sidewalk salt on hold for now, the latest winter weather system to move through the Midlands apparently has missed you.

The winter weather system moving across the central United States that was projected to bring snow to parts of Nebraska and western Iowa over the weekend and create questionable travel conditions has turned out to be minor, if not nonexistent, across that region.

High-pressure systems around Texas and Oklahoma and low-pressure systems around the Dakotas have kept the worst of the winter storm isolated to northeast Kansas and portions of Missouri, said Dan Pydynowski, a meteorologist for AccuWeather, The World-Herald's weather consultant.

Later today, the storm was expected to continue to move across the central part of the country, sweeping through parts of Iowa into Illinois.

Pydynowski said if it wasn't snowing in the Omaha metro area by 2 p.m., there was a good chance it wouldn't snow at all.

"The brunt of the storm is going to miss us," Pydynowski said. "It's on the northern fringe of the system, so most of (the snow) is going to skirt past the southern part of Omaha."

At the most, Omaha and Council Bluffs could get an inch of snow later today and into the evening hours, Pydynowski said.


Other areas in eastern Nebraska, including Lincoln, had received about an inch by midmorning, creating slick, snowpacked roads, meteorologists and police dispatchers said. Lincoln and surrounding communities will see between 1 and 3 inches of snow by the end of the day. Other parts of southeast Nebraska could see up to 4 inches of snow.

City street crews in Lincoln started clearing snow and slush at 2 a.m. Sunday morning, using 20 plows, city officials said. Between midnight and 6:30 a.m., Lincoln police responded to 25 minor accidents caused by slick roads.

Southwest Iowa, closest to the the part of the storm where the highest snowfalls are being recorded, could see between 2 and 6 inches of snow, Pydynowski said. "The farther north you are in Iowa, the less chance there will be snow," he said.

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