LANSING — As they surveyed damage from severe storms that swept through lower Michigan on Sunday, including the Lansing area, officials were keeping an eye on another system that could bring a mix of ice, snow and rain and more thunderstorms to the region on Tuesday night and Wednesday.
A man was killed when a tree fell on a house in Stockbridge Township on Sunday, and in the Lansing area, eastern Ingham County suffered the most damage, with confirmed tornados striking the Williamston and Leslie areas.
Rebecca Hansen, a National Weather Service meteorologist, said Williamston’s EF-1 tornado had winds of approximately 110 mph and an EF-0 tornado south of Leslie had winds of around 75 mph.
With the type of “linear storm system” that tore through the area on Sunday, Hansen said “quick spin ups” of multiple tornados is not uncommon.
A National Weather Service team on Monday was surveying damage at sites in west and south-central Michigan to determine whether straight-line winds or tornadic activity were to blame. The weather service also surveyed damage in the area of M-52 in Ingham County, officials said.
Locally, that’s where the most serious damage from Sunday’s storms happened, in the Williamston and Williamstown Township areas, said Rob Dale, deputy emergency manager for Ingham County.
“Thankfully, the damage was isolated, but when you got hit, you got hit pretty hard,” he said.
Some houses and barns were damaged, including a barn that collapsed on animals, and an assisted living center in Williamston where a roof that had just been installed following a previous storm was pulled off, Dale said. No injuries to people were reported in those incidents, but seven people from the assisted living facility were moved to a different site, Dale said.
Most of the building damage was caused by falling tees, but a handful of houses suffered direct wind damage, he said.
Ingham County Sheriff Scott Wriggelsworth confirmed that a 56-year-old man was killed when a tree fell on a house in Stockbridge Township. Wriggelsworth said he was not aware of any other injuries stemming from that incident.
It’s not always easy to determine whether straight-line winds or a weak tornado were the culprit, Dale said.
“On the low-end (of the tornado wind-speed range), it’s just hard to tell, sometimes,” he said.
A couple cool, dry days are in store before our next big weather system arrives for Tuesday night and Wednesday. We start out with freezing rain and snow near and north of I-96 Tuesday night and early Wednesday, then another round of severe thunderstorms arrives late Wednesday. pic.twitter.com/3ry1Ic0G7k
The weather service also confirmed that damage near Caledonia in Kent County was caused by an EF-0 tornado, with maximum wind speeds of 80 mph.
On Monday afternoon, Nathan Jeruzal, a forecaster for the weather service in Grand Rapids, said a survey team found straight-line wind damage in Calhourn County and was heading to other locations.
In the meantime, forecasters were keeping an eye on another weather system that could bring a mix of rain, freezing rain asnd light snow to the region overnight Tuesday into Wednesday morning, followed by storms later that day, Jeruzal said.
“It will all change to rain by noon Wednesday, and late in the afternoon into the evening, we’re expecting possible additional storms, and some of those could be locally severe,” he said.
Damaging winds would be the main threat, but forecasters can’t rule out large hail or an isolated tornado or two, he said.
Weekend storms knocked out power to hundreds of thousands of utility customers across the state and led to at least three deaths in Kalamazoo County, where a tree fell on a van. All of the victims were children ranging from 2 to 11, the Kalamazoo County Sheriff’s Office said.
Power restoration efforts were also underway in the Lansing area, where about 14,000 customers were without power Monday afternoon, down from 18,000 overnight. Wind speeds from the storm varied widely, with a 96 mph gust recorded at the Jackson airport, compared to 62 mph at Capital Region International Airport in DeWitt Township and 54 mph at the Charlotte airport.
Contact Ken Palmer at kpalmer@lsj.com. Follow him on X @KBPalm_lsj.
This article originally appeared on Lansing State Journal: 1 killed in Lansing area storms as tornadoes confirmed. More severe weather expected
Reporting by Ken Palmer, Lansing State Journal / Lansing State Journal
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