Like a lot of Midlanders, Craig Nyberg wasn't complaining.
The biggest winter storm of the season had just dumped wet, heavy snow across the region, and Nyberg didn't mind the shoveling.
"Obviously we're overdue. The winter thus far has been fairly spectacular," he said.
"Winter," which has been averaging daytime highs around 40 degrees in Omaha, has been a season in which snow was noticeably absent. From Dec. 8 until this weekend, not a single day of inch-plus snow was recorded in the Omaha area.
"If it's got to come, this isn't bad," said Nyberg, 48, who lives near 48th and Charles Streets. "The fact that it came on a weekend is priceless, too."
Snowfall totals varied from a few inches on the edges of the storm to about 17 to 20 inches in west-central Nebraska. Eppley Airfield in Omaha recorded 9.1 inches, and Lincoln logged 11 inches. Lesser amounts were recorded in Iowa.
In Colorado, where the worst of the storm hit, up to 6 feet of snow fell in the Rocky Mountains.
The storm moved out of the Omaha area Saturday night and was expected to push beyond Iowa on Sunday.
The snow was about as wet as it could get and still accumulate as snow and not slush, said Barbara Mayes, meteorologist with the National Weather Service office in Valley.
"It was just cold enough," she said. "Another degree or two warmer, and this would have been rain."
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Echoing Nyberg, roads foremen and public safety officials across the region were pleased that the storm hit on a weekend.
"People have really listened and stayed home," said April Staniec, a dispatcher for the Nebraska State Patrol in Grand Island. "The last big snowstorm, we were really busy, but this one hasn't been nearly as bad."
Jim Bane, maintenance manager for the Department of Transportation in southwest Iowa, said big storms like this one require brute strength to clear roads but otherwise are easier to tackle than lighter ones.
"You just go out and plow snow," Bane said. "It's very straightforward, it doesn't take much chemicals or de-icer, the decisions are easier, the storm is very predictable and consistent.
"It's been a very wet, heavy snow . but we just keep dropping into lower gears until we find one that will push."
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The wet, heavy snow did bring down branches and, as a result, power lines, leaving thousands of homes and businesses without power.
Hardest hit by the storm were rural utilities that had to contend with unplowed country roads to reach homes without power.
Saturday evening, Norris Public Power District in southeast Nebraska had about 700 customers without power, far fewer than what the Omaha Public Power District was dealing with. But Norris was advising customers to make alternate plans for the night.
"Our trucks are getting stuck and we're having a hard time getting around," spokeswoman Andrea Schafer said.
Where possible, the utility was following county plows to homes with outages, but where plows hadn't been, the crews still had to go it alone.
At the height of the storm, OPPD had about 11,000 customers without power, said spokeswoman Paula Lukowski.
Calls began coming in about 7 a.m. Saturday, and the worst of the OPPD outages peaked about noon. At 9 p.m., 1,240 of the utility's customers were without power, Lukowski said.
The outages tended to be along a north-south line of the western edge of the Omaha metro area, she said.
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"The plan is to continue working through the night," she said. "Until we get that last customer on, we'll be out there."
On the bright side, the clingy snow created a photographer's dream. During the early morning hours, the avid and hardy were out snapping images of a black-and-white landscape worthy of Ansel Adams. In Elmwood Park, the creek cut an inky black path through its white-clad wooded corridor.
In far southwest Nebraska, where the heaviest snow fell, kids were doing what kids were doing everywhere, getting rid of a winter itch.
Fifteen-year-old cousins Karlie Osborne and Kandace Ward hitched a sled behind their snowmobile and took advantage of the 17 inches of snow that fell near Tryon, Neb.
"That was fun," she said. "It was cold."
World-Herald staff writers Jeff Beiermann and Sam Womack contributed to this report.
Contact the writer:
402-444-1102, nancy.gaarder@owh.com
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