Between the afternoon of Wednesday the 15th and mid-morning of Thursday the 16th, primarily the southern three-fourths of South Central Nebraska experienced a moderately-strong winter storm that deposited widespread snow totals of mainly 5-9 inches mostly within counties south of Interstate 80 (along with southern York County), and lesser amounts of generally 1-4 in counties along the I-80 corridor (along with Polk County). Meanwhile, the far northern reaches of the area (particularly most of Valley/Greeley counties) saw less than 1 of snow, if hardly any. Though not overly-strong by Central Plains standards, north winds were certainly a factor as well, with sustained speeds commonly 20-25 MPH/gusts 30-35 MPH prompting modest blowing/drifting. Per dozens of NWS and NeRAIN/CoCoRaHS observers, some of the very-highest totals featured: 11.0 in Beaver City, 10.5 near Wilcox, 10.0 at Harlan County Lake, 9.0 four miles south of Shickley and 8.7 four miles southwest of Blue Hill. In the Tri Cities, Hastings was the clear winner with 6.5 at the NWS office, while amounts steadily dropped off just to the north and northwest, with 4.0 at Kearney and only 1.7 in Grand Island. Although this snow contained a beneficial dose of much-needed liquid moisture content, it was also a somewhat dry in nature given that temperatures were fairly cold, averaging in the teens (F). This blanket of fresh snow did not stick around very long, as a steady warm-up into the 30s, 40s and even 50s between the 17th-20th spurred a steady melt-off.
Taking a closer look at the timing and meteorological background behind this event, the first bands of light to moderate snow lifted into the area from the south-southwest between 2-4 p.m. on the 15th, laying down a thin coating on roads just in time for the evening commute. However, the main event clearly unfolded under the cover of darkness, with the heaviest snow bands slowly traversing South Central Nebraska from west-to-east between 9 p.m. and 7 a.m. on the 16th, with most areas catching a break in snow intensity prior to the main morning commute. In the mid-upper levels, the primary player was a large-scale, positively-tilted trough slowly shifting across the central United States. In the mid-levels (particularly evident at 700 millibars), a compact, closed low intensified over the Nebraska-Kansas border during the night as it lifted northeast out of eastern Colorado. Strong frontogenetical forcing along the northern fringes of this low subsequently prompted the development of a relatively narrow/focused mesoscale snow band, with amounts of 6+ inches within/near the local area largely confined to a west-southwest to east-northeast swath only about 40 miles wide. At the surface, South Central Nebraska resided well to the north of a sharp frontal zone stretched from the Southern Plains into the Ohio Valley, with the seasonably-cold airmass and gusty north winds driven by a decent pressure gradient between a 1003 millibar low that tracked from Oklahoma into Arkansas during the night and a sprawling 1033 millibar high centered over the Northern Rockies.