Southwest Michigan Weather

Howdy, folks. Today we turn the site into a blog format for our posts. We're going to focus on more of Michigan and look at mainly forecasts for active weather (not regular) and a lot of other interesting weather situations across the state.

Here are some of the reports that came out of today's severe weather. As expected, we saw some storms putting down some strong gusty winds. Some of these winds caused some damage. A tree limb (size unknown) fell, causing a transformer to catch fire in Charlotte, and there were reports of numerous trees and power lines down across the Battle Creek area. Minor urban flooding occurred in Burlington, along with marble size hail. A lot of 3-4" tree limbs were reported downed in Sturgis. A CoCoRahs observer from Litchfield (Hillsdale County) reported 1.17" of rain occurring in 40 minutes time. Also in Hillsdale County, the entire northern half of the county had a lot of reports of trees down, along with numerous power outages from wind. The Ypsilanti area has a report of a 3 foot diameter tree down, crushing two cars, and damaging a roof of a house. I haven't received word on if their were any injuries. Seeing as the time of the event was 3:20 PM, I assume the house/cars were unoccupied. A 4 foot diameter tree in Ypsilanti also caused power lines to be brought down. ALSO in Ypsilanti, a 14"-diameter tree fell on a house. Flash flooding was reported around Romulus. Waters were reported to be "over the curb." Gust of 60 mph in Adrian, and of 53 mph in Traverse City. Nickel size hail was also reported in Traverse City.

I noticed earlier this afternoon that a Severe Thunderstorm Warning was issued for Livingston County, Michigan. Typically, the National Weather Service in Detroit issues warnings for that county, but today the NWS in Grand Rapids issued it. I contacted the webmaster of the NWS in Grand Rapids, and he told me that the NWS in Detroit was having some tech issues. I learned from him that National Weather Services' have back-up National Weather Services,' and Grand Rapids is the back-up for Detroit. Since NWS Detroit was having tech issues, NWS Grand Rapids (being the back-up) issued the severe tstorm warning for Livingston. NWS Detroit was back to cancel the warning.