First came the weather alerts, then came winds that sounded like a train and made her house vibrate, Janet Hull said.
Hull, co-owner of Hull’s Dairy farm in Fenwick, between Ionia and Carson City, said a tornado destroyed a barn that housed cows and damaged the house and other farm buildings late on Tuesday, April 14. “Last night about 10:58, I kept getting alerts on my phone,” she said. “The wind was acting kind of funny so the dog and I went downstairs and soon as we hit the steps it sounded like a train coming through. That’s when the tornado hit. I felt the house vibrate and shake. It was awful.”The farmers milk more than 230 cows and have 200 to 300 heifers. Thankfully, the milking parlor was okay, she said.All the cattle had been accounted for, and friends and neighbors were helping wih the clean-up work, she said.
The National Weather Service in Grand Rapids on Wednesday confirmed an EF1 tornado touched down in Gratiot and Montcalm counties, one of three confirmed tornadoes from Tuesday. The other two were in Allegan County.
Thunderstorms that struck southern Michigan on Tuesday night led to widespread damage and caused at least two tornadoes. Tens of thousands of Michigan residents were without power on Wednesday, April 15.
About 58,000 electric customers in Michigan were without power Wednesday morning.
All of the utility companies serving the Lansing area reported outages, including the Lansing Board of Water & Light, Consumers Energy, DTE Energy and HomeWorks Tri-County Electric Cooperative.
Consumers Energy was reporting its largest number of outages south of Lansing, from Kalamazoo through Battle Creek and Jackson. Outages affecting more than 1,600 customers spanned an area along M-57, west of U.S. 127 in Clinton and Gratiot counties.
In Fulton Township, east of Carson City, snapped utility poles and downed electical lines were visible from M-57, a short distance from Fulton High School. An uprooted evergreen tree lay on the ground at St. Paul the Apostle Parish.
A huge canopy covering a bank of fuel pumps was blown over at the Middleton EZ Mart, across from the high school, around 11:15 p.m. Tuesday, The store was running on backup generator power on Wednesday and never closed, although Manager Tiffanie Andrews said there was a time when customers couldn’t get to the store because of storm damage.
Fulton Schools Superintendent Thomas Torok confirmed the district had minor damage following the overnight storms, and that there may be multiple days of closures for the district due to power outages.
Torok said Consumers Energy said it might not be until the weekend that power is restored, and that there are around a dozen downed power lines around the school.
Fulton Schools is located about eight miles west of U.S. 27 and about 10 miles east of Carson City.
“There’s only one driveway in and out of the school we can use because the power lines are down,” he said. “We can’t have school without power because the whole world runs with electricity. We have no phone systems, we can’t run water pumps to flush toilets, or do anything.
“The biggest issue we have, and throughout the entire area, there’s like 12 poles down in and around the school,” Torok said. “Our community in Middleton and Perrinton were hit very hard.”
Following the storm, there were leaks and damage to the roofs at both the elementary and middle and high school buildings. Torok said the damage is still being assessed and that the district’s insurance provider has been contacted.
Updates will be posted on the district’s Facebook page, Torok said.
The NWS Grand Rapids office issued more than a dozen tornado warnings as the storms moved through the Lower Peninsula, and weather offices in other areas issued more. NWS tornado warnings began to be issued shortly after 9 p.m. Tuesday, April 14, and continued through early Wednesday.
This article originally appeared on Lansing State Journal: ‘It sounded like a train coming through.’ Tornado confirmed in Gratiot County
Reporting by Ken Palmer, Lansing State Journal / Lansing State Journal
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