Industrial plants in Norfolk generate snow across parts of Nebraska

On Monday, many places in Nebraska were being dusted with snow. It wasn’t from mother nature, it was actually man made.

The National Weather Service location in the Omaha and Valley area reported that the snow was created by the steam from one or more plants in Norfolk.

“When your driving around on a typical day, you pass by a plant of some sort and you see the steam that it’s producing. Typically, that just evaporates but on a day like today where we had just the right temperatures, just the right humidity in place it was actually able to produce snow,” said Brian Barjenbruch, the science and operations officer at the National Weather Service in Valley.

It’s not common but it has happened before in the United States.

Barjenbruch explained how it’s possible for plants to help generate snow.

“When you have heat and steam which is moisture added to the atmosphere, and when that goes up in the atmosphere on a day like today, you end up getting additional clouds and snow crystals to form, now after those form, the wind continues to push them downstream,” said Barjenbruch.

The National Weather Service tweeted a video of the band of snow.

The wind carried the snow to as far south as Lincoln and Crete. Some areas got up to 2 inches of snow, just from the plants.

“It was a day where there was light snow to fall but if you were down wind of this particular snow band, you got a little bit more than everyone else,” said Barjenbruch.