The National Transportation Safety Board has released preliminary reports on two separate accidents involving plane crashes in northeast Nebraska on Aug. 26.
Witnesses reported low clouds and bad weather near the farm fields were the planes crashed.
Joseph Rudloff, 73, of Norfolk, was killed when his two-seat RANS S19 crashed at 8:41 a.m. four miles southwest of Crofton.
Fifty minutes later Charles J. Finck, 79, of Elk River, Minnesota, died when his single engine Piper PA-28-140 Cherokee crashed seven miles west and three miles north of Wayne.
Brian Barjenbruch, science and operations officer at the National Weather Service, said the nearest cold front on the morning of Aug. 26 was well north of the area, over South Dakota and Minnesota.
He said visibility varied widely at nearby observation points that morning - 10 miles at Norfolk, seven miles at Wayne and 1/4 mile at Yankton.
But the forecast for Knox and Cedar counties, which stretch from Crofton to just north of Wayne, carried a warning.
"There was a mention of patchy fog during the morning," Barjenbruch said.
The NTSB investigations are continuing. The preliminary reports posted on its website represent the investigators' initial observations about the two crashes and don't list a probable cause.
That is likely to be included in a final report, which often takes a year or more to be released.
