Twister, hail reported

HAYES CENTER -- The Kevin Fornoff barn near Hayes Center leans a little more toward the east and some homes and businesses in Indianola are missing windows after a hail-packed storm roared through Southwest Nebraska late Thursday afternoon.

The public reported a tornado six miles south of Bartley.

'We had horrible, horrible winds and rain," said Ann Fornoff of Hayes Center. "Our barn leans a couple inches more toward the east now." Fornoff said high winds -- she estimated 70 to 80 miles an hour -- chased her family to the basement for a while.

Indianola truck-owner Roger Werkmeister said this morning he will have to replace an air breather and repair deep hail dents on his truck, and business owner Shelly Larimore is spending today cleaning up shards of glass after golf ball-sized hail stones slammed into Indianola.

Larimore said the hail stones broke two windows in her beauty shop in downtown Indianola and tore through plastic on the inside of the windows. "They were like meteors," she said. "They were coming down so hard."

"What was weird," she said, "is that the broken windows are on the north side of the building and protected by a building on the north." She wondered if the windows weren't broken by the bouncing hail stones.

Larimore said her husband's pickup bed, "looked like it was full of marbles."

Reports from Bartley ranged from 4 1/2-inch hail six miles south of town to a funnel cloud and a tornado six miles south.

Red Willow County Sheriff's Lt. Alan Kotschwar said this morning his office has received no reports of damage.

Storm spotters in Dundy, Hitchcock, Hayes, Red Willow, Furnas and Frontier counties were out in full force throughout the late afternoon and evening.