This week, Nebraska had some much-needed precipitation, as well as cool temperatures. The start of the week had a warm, southerly flow drawing humid air up into the state Monday and Tuesday, especially across the Missouri River Valley and southeast Nebraska (Omaha and Lincoln saw the warmest readings early in the week). Throughout the week, morning dew points and relative humidity values reached the 60s–70s ahead of the frontal boundary, which kept the air near the surface feeling sticky and muggy through Tuesday. By mid-week, the state fell under the influence of a closed low that had moved in over the northern Plains. Temperatures dropped into the 70s across much of Nebraska Wednesday through Friday, with cooler highs more pronounced north of the I-80 corridor. I will be going through more details regarding these trends below.
850 mb southerly low-level flow and warm-air advection ahead of the front supported the warm, moist start Monday through Tuesday. Several embedded shortwave vorticities provided repeated forcing for the ascent of the warm air advection. These shortwaves were the culprits behind the mid-level rounds of convection from Wednesday to Friday, where 850 mb moisture transport gave chances for heavier rain and sustained cloud cover.
Surface analysis showed a front extending from central South Dakota into the Panhandle at the early end of the week. That front pushed east into Nebraska late Tuesday and then stalled from Wednesday into Thursday. Ahead of it, southerly winds were common with 10 to 20 mph (or 5 to 10 m/s) speeds. Behind parts of the front, a cooler air mass filtered into north-central Nebraska. Convective outflow boundaries altered the frontal location at times (notably last Wednesday morning), producing localized storms. While organized severe outbreaks were limited, conditional strong cells and a few strong wind and precipitation cells were noted in central/northcentral Nebraska.
Precipitation was periodic and around the times of the passing of the embedded shortwaves mentioned above. Mid-week produced the greatest precipitation totals: northeast and northcentral Nebraska picked up the largest individual bursts during Wednesday and Thursday, while western high-terrain sites (Chadron, Valentine, North Platte) also recorded local totals from cells and orographic/upslope enhancement. From this, I was able to plot the total precipitation values from the locations mentioned above.
It displays a bar chart, which shows the total weekly precipitation in inches.
Below shows the temperature and precipitation extremes from various stations that I noted from the Mesonet sites in the area:
Maximum High Temperature: 85.2°F — Scottsbluff on 09/15/25.
Minimum High Temperature: 76.7°F — Valentine on 09/15/25.
Minimum Low Temperature: 60.1°F — Chadron on 09/17/25.
Maximum Low Temperature: 76.5°F — Grand Island on 09/15/25.
Maximum Weekly Precipitation: 3.19 in — Chadron (weekly total).
To wrap up the summary, warm and humid early-week conditions gave way to a slow-moving closed low, and repeated, embedded shortwaves cooled highs into the 70s and produced multiple chances for showers and thunderstorms mid- to late-week. Locally heavy rain occurred from Wednesday through Friday, with a possible cooling of temperatures later into the week, likely low to mid 70s toward the latter half of the coming week.
