Rick Peters had a 30-foot pine tree in the backyard of his Lincoln home until Aug. 9, when wind gusts of 90 mph came through the Capital City and much of eastern Nebraska.
“It took this healthy tree and basically broke it off at the base of the trunk and it blew over on our neighbor’s garage, essentially destroying it,” Peters said. “We weren’t ever concerned about it breaking off at the trunk like this.”
Peters was born and raised in Nebraska and has lived in his current home for 15 years. He remembers strong-wind events, but said they used to occur much less frequently.
“Maybe every five or ten years, and now it seems like, ‘What is this year’s storm going to be?’” Peters said. “And sometimes there’s more than one.”
That was the case in 2025. The winds that took down Peters’ tree was part of a storm system that spanned Aug. 9 and 10. Earlier in the year, a March 19 winter storm brought strong winds throughout Nebraska, but especially the eastern part of the state. Lincoln saw gusts that exceeded 70 mph. The two high-wind events caused more than $113 million in damage to public infrastructure, according to the Nebraska Emergency Management Agency, though some of that damage was exacerbated by ice and snow in the March 13 event and flooding on and after Aug. 9. Another storm in June caused more than $10 million in damage to public infrastructure. NEMA does not track non-emergency or private damage.
As of Dec. 30, there were 46 high wind warnings in Nebraska in 2025, including ones that were part of the two storms in March and August, according to the National Weather Service. That count ties the record high since the agency started keeping track of that statistic 20 years ago. This year’s winds have taken down utility poles, destroyed roofs, spread wildfires and toppled many trees. And the impact has been felt by taxpayers, property owners and utility customers.
Lincoln Electric System counted more than 52,500 total customers who experienced outages during the March and August storms, and it spent nearly $4 million to restore service and infrastructure. LES plans for extreme weather, but 2025 came as a surprise.
“We’re over budget,” said Joel Dagerman, asset management and planning manager at LES, adding that the public utility relies on FEMA for disaster relief, but there is a delay. “During that time, LES is paying the bill, and we exceeded our estimated amount for this past year, for sure.”
The Lincoln City Council approved a rate increase of 3% that will go into effect on Jan. 1. LES communications specialist Amy Svoboda said that increase is driven primarily by rising power costs and transmission expenses. She added that federal and state relief dollars lower the burden on customers, but destructive weather events often necessitate loans.
“These additional debt service payments can impact customer rates,” Svoboda wrote in an email to Nebraska Public Media.
Utilities are also investing in resiliency against strong winds and other extreme weather. Some of the Omaha Public Power District’s 6.3% rate increase will pay for, among other things, stronger infrastructure, burying distribution lines underground and increased tree-trimming activity, according to the utility’s 2026 Final Corporate Operating Plan.
OPPD’s tree-trimming budget alone rose more than 56%, from $15.7 million in 2024 to $24.5 million in 2025. The utility hasn’t finalized its budget for 2026, but OPPD media specialist Jodi Baker confirmed that it will rise again. She said the 2025 jump was partly a response to a July 31, 2024, storm with hurricane-force winds that caused over 219,000 outages. The high-wind event in March caused less than half that amount of outages, but it took down a record 1,500 distribution poles in the OPPD coverage area.
“Here in the 2020s, we are certainly seeing an increase in the number of storms and in severity,” said Chris Angland, director of grid operations at OPPD. “Let's be honest, having two very significant storms that rank as the worst ‘blank’ storms in OPPD history is pretty telling, that's for sure.”
Angland was referring to the 2024 storm that caused the most outages in OPPD history and the March 19, 2025, storm, which caused the most damage to infrastructure.
There are some positive impacts of high winds in Nebraska. The 2024 LES annual report shows that wind farms generated 35% of the utility’s energy production that year. An OPPD spokesperson said that wind makes up nearly 34% of its energy portfolio, but that extreme wind events can damage turbines, so they can’t be used if winds are too strong.
The increase in damaging storms is proving to be an economic boon for companies that help clean up the mess.
“The last couple years have been busier,” said Jordan Klug, the owner and operator of Klug Tree Service in Lincoln. “The last [storm] that came through in August, I mean, we were booked out already, probably three months.”
Klug contracts for the City of Lincoln, the City of Seward and LES, but most of his customers are homeowners who want to clear limbs or whole trees that pose a threat to their property – often at the behest of insurance companies. He said many homeowners receive letters from their insurers saying they have to execute an order to trim or clear trees within a certain period.
“You got 30 days, 45 days, whatever it is, and they make them have it done otherwise they just cancel their policy,” Klug said. “We’ve seen a decent amount of that in the last probably two to three years.”
At more than $6,500 per year, Nebraskans pay the highest average home insurance premiums in the country, according to Bankrate. Shannon Martin, an insurance expert for the financial services publication, said that Nebraska overtook Louisiana this year for the unfortunate distinction.
“You're having some really extreme weather that seems to only intensify, and then you have other things, like tariffs on imports, and then changes in labor availability,” Martin said.
Martin added that wind was the primary driver for the jump in rates in Nebraska, followed by hail, and that both are covered under most policies in the state. That’s not the case in Louisiana, she added, and most customers there must buy separate wind policies.
Insurance companies can deny claims if roofs and siding are not strong enough to resist wind damage, Martin said. They can also switch from replacement costs to the current cash value of the damaged parts of a home, so she advised homeowners to keep an eye on their policy contracts and keep up with regular maintenance.
The total losses reported to the Nebraska Department of Insurance by home insurers from 2019 to 2024 – when insurance prices saw dramatic increases in the state – were more than $5.4 billion. Total losses in Iowa for the same period exceeded $6.6 billion, according to the Iowa Department of Insurance and Financial Services. Yet Iowa homeowners pay less than half the premiums of their Nebraska counterparts, according to Bankrate.
Martin said that insurance companies can adjust rates more easily in some states than in others, which could explain the difference. She also said that Nebraska could be a bellwether for its neighbors with similar weather conditions.
“So if the same amount of damage is occurring in Nebraska and neighboring states, and the rates in the other states haven't increased yet, it's likely that they will,” Martin said.
Rick Peters, whose tree fell on his neighbor’s garage in Lincoln, isn’t so sure about that. He sells home insurance for a living and said that Iowa’s population, and the risk, is spread throughout that state. Nebraska’s largest population centers are concentrated in the same part of the state and are likely to be affected by the same weather events, resulting in concurrent claims from many homeowners at once.
“There’s not a bunch of premiums coming from Chadron and Scottsbluff to bail that out,” Peters said.
His neighbor, Justin Mains, is paying to rebuild the garage that was destroyed by the fallen pine tree out of pocket. Mains’ insurance company isn’t contributing because it is detached from the house and, therefore, not covered under home insurance.
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