BEATRICE - Thursday was a cleanup day for residents of southeast Nebraska, where powerful thunderstorm winds knocked down trees, power lines and damaged structures Wednesday.


In Beatrice, the city set up a site at First and Ella for residents to bring in downed branches from the storm. Mayor Stan Wirth was in his Pinnacle Bank Office downtown when the fast-moving thunderstorm line hit.


"The thing that really indicated we were going to have some severe weather is we have these big Christmas wreaths on the outside of the bank, and one of them decided to take off. Myself and a co-worker chased it down and retrieved it. But then, it just continually got worse and worse and worse...and it came through really quickly and took everybody by surprise...even though there was sufficient warnings continually throughout the day, that this was actually going to occur."


Part of a shredded roof on a downtown building ended up scattered in the bank’s parking lot.  The storm brought a flashback to the summer of 2016, when a similar bow echo storm line did considerable damage in Beatrice. The difference being this time, the storm line moved through much faster.


"The other one was a little more prolonged storm....this one came through awful quick. It still packed some eighty-plus mile-per-hour winds...and because of that it caused quite a bit of damage. Power outages were certainly prevalent...and mostly in the northeast part of the city."


Most areas had power restored late Wednesday night or early Thursday morning.


With entire trees and thousands of branches down, the disposal site at First and Ella will grow large over the coming days. Pickups and trailers were streaming into the site early Thursday.