OT: Potential severe weather headed toward AA tonight.
Please delete in the AM if necessary.
Tornado warning issued in Coldwater until 12:15 AM. Heavy stuff just north of them, which is likely headed this way. I’m in Adrian and it’s starting to thunder now, so I might be getting some of this right in the face, too.
Stay safe, my friends.
Pretty much all of i-94 and surrounding areas is going to get it.
Coldwater is my hometown, was just there all last week.
Coincidentally I found this clock that my father kept from a tornado he survived when he was a teenager. The time still shows the moment the power went out on Coldwater Lake
This is really neat. Im fascinated by tornados for some odd reason. Above, when i seen 'Coldwater' i immediately think of the road in Flint. That road in flint is heavily associated with 'Tornado'. For those that do not know, the greatest (by far) tornado ever in Michigan is the great Flint/Beecher tornado of 1953. It touched down on Coldwater road, and followed it east and completely wiped out the Beecher district. It is rated as the 10th worst tornado in US history killing i believe 116 people. They found a persons check in Canada (it carried it from Flint to Canada).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1953_Flint%E2%80%93Beecher_tornado
It was the deadliest US tornado until the recent Joplin tornado in 2011. And the crazy thing about it is that it was in Michigan, WAY north of the usual deadly tornado alley. This was a once in a 1000 year tornado in its area.
I grew up in Swartz Creek (we moved there in 1972 from the outskirts of Overland Park, KS) then Bay City. I remember plenty of sirens going off when I was a kid. Shiawassee County was our personal tornado alley.
Hello fellow Dragon!
I too have many memories of tornado sirens from my childhood in Swartz Creek. The ones in Chicago last night took me right back to them.
Dragons suck, CA Cavaliers rule!
Or at least we thought we did way back when I went there......
Lol yeah we were pretty awful when I was there.
Tornado outbreaks fascinate me too. To the degree that I got my undergrad degree in Meteorology (although I went a completely different direction for Grad School and my career).
Michigan definitely gets strong tornadoes (F3+) with the right (wrong) set-up. On Palm Sunday, some areas in Michigan near the southern border got hit with back-to-back strong tornadoes. You're right, Flint was the strongest individual tornado in the state's history. But I'd argue Palm Sunday 1965 was the most dynamic and most severe collection of storms. Both incredible events.
I lived in Beecher less than a mile from Coldwater Road for my first 10 years, which was seven years before that tornado. The people in that area had long memories about that disaster. The standing rule was, if it even looked like tornado weather, we weren't allowed out of the yard. If the sirens ever went off, Mom had us in the basement quicker than an air raid warden during the London Blitz.
https://images.app.goo.gl/SSqEHXCvDeAbU4z69
The above link will bring you to an MLive story and 60 photos from the 1965 Palm Sunday Tornado, the first 25 pics being from the twister that killed 5 in the Alpine Township/Comstock Park area (NW side of Grand Rapids).
The first photo you see is one I'm personally familiar with: it was a picture of my Uncle Joe's farm (Joseph Brechting being my great uncle/brother of my maternal grandfather). This pic was taken from what remained of Holy Trinity Catholic Church. The church and my grade school, Holy Trinity Elementary were destroyed, along with nearly a dozen nearby homes along Alpine Church Road. I believe 2 or 3 of the fatalities happened on that street before the tornado veered slightly north and destroyed The Swan Inn Motel at the corner of M-37 and 6 Mile Rd. I can't identify Uncle Joe with any certainty in the GR Press photo, but it might possibly be him walking across the street towards what's remaining of his farmhouse and barns, all of which were wiped off the face of the earth by what would now be classified as an EF4 tornado.
My Uncle Fred's home and farm, located just 2/10th of a mile to the south of the church properties, escaped with just minor damage other than tons of wind-blown debris that was scattered in his fields and orchards. This particular tornado, while having estimated winds of up to 200mph, had a relatively narrow path over much of the 35 or so miles it was on the ground.
I was a 4th grader when the 1965 Palm Sunday tornadoes hit and I actually spotted this particular twister. Dad had assigned me (oldest son) to look out the living room window for a few moments towards the western sky. I suddenly saw a funnel -shaped cloud (it was probably just over a mile away to the NW at that point) and yelled for my parents to look, Dad came to the window and confirmed it to be a tornado and immediately herded all of us to the basement storm shelter while he raced next door to alert the neighbor, then returning to join us safely.
Fortunately the twister was heading towards the NE and we were spared. Pretty sure that phone and power lines were downed in the area though, so once the winds and lightning subsided, Dad hopped in the car and drove north to check on both of my great-uncles (both were elderly and widowers); turns out both survived uninjured. Because of all the damage, Dad couldn't make it down Alpine Church Road to check on his own brother and his family ---we didn't get word until the next day that they were also spared (their home on M-37 was on a hill just a half mile directly east of the church!).
I had a pretty harrowing drive back home to lansing from Detroit, but it sounds like it's starting to calm down a bit- for right now at least.
Hope everyone made it through safely - Tornados are some scary shit. Sounds Chicago had 7-8 touch down
There was a lot of attention all over the Chicago area yesterday in the early evening.
The conditions seemed right to form a tornado in areas where those conditions are rare, or don’t occur frequently. The damage from the storms and any tornadoes that formed was limited, IMO.
(I live in the Chicago area, and our community sirens went off to provide “take shelter” notice. The Emergency Broadcast system went into effect too.. both over the radio and tv.)
Well, I have a picture of one of the funnel clouds in the Chicagoland area. It nearly touched down a couple times that I am aware of. I can’t solve the upload from my phone issue. Apple photos are HEIC files not jpg….
It produced minor wind damage and lots of frenzy over the course of an hour as we tracked it with an “Facebook live” storm chaser. It was a quite a site around 5:30pm!
Without doubt it was very unusual weather for the north and west sides of the city. Wind damage occurred in a number of areas - as you point out - downed trees and roof damage.
this is not the normal picture of the chicago skyline. must've been some interesting weather. hopefully nobody hurt.
XM - to my knowledge, no severe injuries or fatalities have been associated with the weather. The wind damage was noticeable in several areas in the city and suburbs.
FWIW, we did take shelter in our home, as was advised. Fortunately, no known damage to our property - or our neighbors.
I live just outside of downtown and we had the tornado sirens going here which is pretty rare in the city proper. I heard one touched down near O'Hare.
My dog jumped on my head while I was sleeping so I know the storm was big.
The radar maps looked pretty bad last night. I live north of Dexter in an area that is the proverbial canary in the electrical mineshaft, so I pay attention to large-scale storm predictions. We didn't lose power or hear much (if any) thunder overnight. Hope everyone else fared as well as we did.
There was heavy rain and a rumble of thunder or two, but it seemed to pass pretty quickly.
We got a bit of thunder in Belleville and we were fortunate enough to only get some light rain.
I live in downriver Wayne County. It rained at a decent clip for a while in the evening, but we didn't see what they saw to the west and north of here. The photos of the sky at various points from the Chicago area, on the other hand, are both amazing and jarring.
I heard a crack of thunder last night that was about a million decibels. Cooler this morning but still humid.
Stay safe. Here in VT we got catastrophic rain earlier this week.