As we deal with high winds and a wind advisory today, the season’s first round of severe weather took place last night.The strong storm system expected overnight did produce various forms of severe weather in parts of Michigan. In our area, there was certainly some damage. There were reports of lightning hitting a tree in Southfield and crashing into a house, and of flooding, especially in Royal Oak. Other area’s of the state had a few more issues, especially Muskegon.
Fortunately for Michigan the storm moved through during the middle of the night, which is a time when severe weather normally weakens. Just west of Michigan, in northern Illinois, a large half-mile wide tornado killed at least one and possibly injured 12 others. It was this same thunderstorm complex that produced all the damage in Muskegon. The highest wind gust measured in Michigan was 56 MPH in Muskegon. There could have been other isolated higher wind gusts, but there wasn’t a wind gauge in those locations.
After the storms came onshore at Muskegon, their damaging wind gusts weakened quickly. The eastern half of Lower Michigan doesn’t have any major damage reports as of right now.
Heavy rain was another product of this storm. Many locations in the western half of Lower Michigan had between one and three inches of rain. Elbridge in Oceana County had 3.25″ of rain. The eastern half of the state had a fairly uniform rain amount between one inch and one and a half inches. This storm didn’t produce a lot of hail reports, but it did produce one big hail report. Saranac had ping pong sized hail at 1:30 a.m. last night.