Although minor accumulation persisted well into the day across parts of South Central Nebraska on Monday the 15th, one of the first impactful snow events of the 2014-15 winter season occurred mainly during the pre-dawn hours as generally 1-4 inches of fairly wet snow targeted several counties primarily west of the Highway 281 corridor. Within this area, locations roughly 15 miles either side of a line from Ord-Elm Creek-Oxford received the most concentrated swath of steady, wind-blown snow, the majority of which fell between 2-8 a.m. Even more specifically, some of the overall-worst early-morning travel conditions focused within a narrow, north-south oriented snow band over Phelps and western Buffalo counties. Including the generally light accumulation that lingered well into the day, a few of the top storm total snowfall totals from NWS cooperative observers featured 4.0 in Ord, 2.5 in Arcadia, 2.5 six miles north-northwest of Oxford and 1.5 at Holdrege. In addition, a social media report yielded 3.0 four miles south of Odessa. While actual amounts were not overly-significant in most places, the briefly-intense snowfall rates caused some issues, especially given that sustained north-northwest wind averaged 20-25 MPH while gusting up to around 40 MPH.
Prior to colder air building down from the north and changing precipitation over to snow on the 15th, most of the afternoon and evening of Sunday the 14th featured scattered showers and even a few rare December thunderstorms within South Central Nebraska. Some places also experienced a fairly brief period of freezing rain and/or sleet during the overnight transition from rain to snow. In the big picture of the mid and upper levels, this event was driven by a powerful, nearly vertically-stacked, closed low pressure system that tracked from southwest-to-northeast across Kansas over the course of the night. Given that South Central Nebraska remained north and eventually northwest of the surface low this entire time, increasingly-strong north-northwest wind ushered increasingly-colder air into the area. As often occurs to the northwest of a well-organized low pressure system, the primary north-south oriented snow band focused within an area of enhanced low to mid level frontogenesis/deformation.