One Year Ago, a Bomb Cyclone Triggered Record Flooding in Nebraska That Destroyed Dam

One year ago, a massive storm in the nation's heartland, known as a bomb cyclone, unleashed record flooding in Nebraska and several other states.

The storm intensified rapidly in the High Plains of eastern Colorado and western Kansas. By March 13, 2019, its pressure had plunged fast enough to be classified as a bomb cyclone and set all-time low-pressure records in four locations.

Named Winter Storm Ulmer by The Weather Channel, the bomb cyclone was a paralyzing blizzard from Colorado to northwest Minnesota.

Over 1,000 miles of interstate highways were shut down, over 1,100 motorists in Colorado alone were stranded and power was knocked out to a quarter-million homes and businesses.

(MORE: March Weather Has a Notoriously Storm Reputation)

It produced a record-setting 80 mph wind gust in Denver, and 100 to 105 mph wind gusts in parts of eastern New Mexico and West Texas. These high winds blew a train off a bridge in northern New Mexico and tore siding off the tower at Rick Husband International Airport in Amarillo, Texas.

All of this would have made this bomb cyclone memorable enough.

But it's probably most remembered by the epic flood it set off in the Plains.

The Epic Flood

The bomb cyclone was the final element in a rare confluence of factors that triggered massive flooding in the nation's midsection that lingered in some areas for months.

Rapid snowmelt was followed by heavy rain. This unleashed rapid runoff into rivers previously frozen from exceptional February and early-March cold.

The ice-choked Niobrara River in northern Nebraska burst through and destroyed Spencer Dam and sent a wave of water and massive ice slabs into nearby towns and fields.

In all, 42 locations from the Missouri Valley to Wisconsin set new record river levels in mid-March 2019.

(FULL RECAP: Record Mid-March 2019 Heartland Flood)

Even the National Weather Service couldn't escape the flooding.

A dike failure along the Platte River in eastern Nebraska prompted the National Weather Service to temporarily evacuate its office west of Omaha to an office in Hastings, about 115 miles away.

Flood also damaged 137 structures on Offutt Air Force Base along the Missouri River just south of Omaha, headquarters of the U.S. Strategic Command.

This story didn't end in March.

A wet spring, summer and fall kept stretches of the Missouri River flooded much of the rest of the year, months longer than the previous major flood in 2011.

It took until six days before Christmas for Nebraska to be free of any National Weather Service flood warnings, watches or advisories, a streak that began just after Groundhog Day.

In Nebraska alone the flood affected over 7,000 homes with damage estimated at $2.7 billion.

NOAA estimated total damage from this historic flood event at $10.8 billion, one of the nation's costliest inland flood events on record.

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