Union City — Federal weather officials said there wasn’t a tornado watch or a severe thunderstorm watch in effect when a storm hit southwest Michigan Friday with deadly force.
Bill Bunting, deputy director of the National Weather Service’s Storm Prediction Center in Norman, Okla., said his center only issued severe weather outlooks on Friday that forecasted the potential for severe storms and tornadoes in southwest Michigan.
But the Storm Prediction Center didn’t issue a tornado watch in southwest Michigan because the conditions that led to tornadoes were “so localized” that it was “very difficult to detect in advance and issue a watch prior to the storm’s development,” Bunting said. He said the storm was primarily concentrated in three counties.
“This was very, very constrained in space and time — a very small area,” he said.
Bunting said a tornado watch typically covers many counties — 25,000 to 30,000 square miles on average — and is in effect for four to eight hours.
He said his center forecasts severe weather using observational information, computer model information and forecaster judgment.
Lonnie Fisher, a meteorologist at the National Weather Service Northern Indiana, said that the Storm Prediction Center is responsible for issuing severe thunderstorm and tornado watches, but local National Weather Service offices are responsible for severe thunderstorm and tornado warnings.
Fisher said that when initial tornado reports came in from the Edwardsburg area, the National Weather Service issued a tornado warning and then issued more warnings as the storm progressed.
Four tornadoes touched down on Friday afternoon. The confirmed tornadoes ranged in intensity from EF0 to EF3. The weakest, with winds of 85 mph, occurred in Calhoun County between Teknosha and Homer. The strongest, reaching 150 mph, struck the area around Union Lake and Union City, killing three people. The third tornado, an EF1 with 95 mph winds, touched down in the Edwardsburg area northwest of the intersection of Runkle Street and Conrad Road, destroying an attached garage and damaging a home where a 12-year-old boy was killed, officials said. The fourth confirmed tornado, rated EF2, produced peak winds of 130 mph near Three Rivers.
‘Take every potential threat seriously’
Bunting said Storm Prediction Center officials“learn from every event,” and he wants to see all the information from the damage surveys that the National Weather Service teams are completing.
“It’s a big challenge … to forecast these extremely localized events,” he said.
He said that when severe weather is in the forecast, it’s important to “take every potential threat seriously.”
“If you’re a citizen just wondering, ‘What should I plan for today?’, any risk of severe storms is important to take seriously, whether it’s a higher-end risk or a lower-end risk,” he said.
Brandon Lewis, Macomb County’s director of emergency management and communications, said the tornadic weather is “obviously tragic.” He said it was “even more potentially dangerous” because no tornado watch was in effect.
“I think that’s just a really good reminder that even if there’s not a watch product in place from the National Weather Service, if there’s severe weather, dangerous weather conditions can pop up at any time, and people need to be aware of that,” he said.
Sirens in Branch County
While there are outdoor sirens throughout Branch County, there are none in the immediate vicinity of Union Lake, officials said during a Saturday afternoon press conference at the lake.
“In this specific area, we’re in the furthest northwest corner of Branch County, there is not a tornado siren,” said Tim Miner, Branch County emergency management coordinator. “You’re probably not, with the wind how it is today, you would not hear the Union City sirens …”
He added that the county uses a “code red” location-based system that sends emergency alerts to cellphones in an area.
“That did activate,” he said.
This article originally appeared on The Detroit News: No tornado watch issued or sirens available for Union Lake before tornado
Reporting by Anne Snabes and Max Reinhart, The Detroit News / The Detroit News
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
