By Mark Coddington
mark.coddington@theindependent.com

What's unusual was how hard that punch landed.

"This storm was an anomaly," said Larry Wirth, a spokesman for the National Weather Service in Hastings. "It was a heavy storm for April."

With just 0.2 inches of snow and 1.2 inches of total moisture, the beating Grand Island took was tame compared with the one absorbed by its neighbors to the north and west.

Observers in Burwell reported 6 inches of snow, along with 5.5 inches in Broken Bow, 5 inches in Ord and 4 inches in Greeley.

Farther into the Sandhills, totals reached levels more appropriate for a crippling December blizzard: 11 inches in Anselmo, northeast of Broken Bow; 12.5 inches in Deuel County, west of Ogallala; 13 inches in Hooker County, south of Mullen.

North Platte's two-day snowfall totals placed the storm among the five worst April snowstorms since statistics were tracked more than a century ago, said Kenny Roberg, a forecaster in the National Weather Service's North Platte office.

While long stretches of highway were closed in western Nebraska, results were somewhat muted closer to Central Nebraska.

Custer County Sheriff Ted Henderson said Friday afternoon that no major accidents had been reported, though he said many people had slid off roads on Thursday.

Parts of highways 2 and 92 were closed near Merna, but problems were confined to parts of the county west and northwest of Broken Bow, Henderson said.

Interim Valley County Sheriff Gary Walker said no accidents had occurred there, though two cars had been snowed in west of Ord. Road conditions were good Friday where snowplows had gone through, he said.

Snowfall near Grand Island was actually less than predicted, Wirth said, adding that nobody was complaining about that.

He expected temperatures to shoot up in Grand Island to the high 40s Saturday, the 50s on Sunday and the 60s and possibly 70s by next week.

"It'll be a fleeting memory by Monday," Wirth said of the storm.