2012-03-15 MISC: MI

[Todd Renshaw]

Not exactly an eye witness account, but I figured if I didn't post, maybe it would be ignored.

We had a bit of excitement drop from the skies west of Detroit yesterday. Really small potatoes by plains standards, but for whatever it's worth to those who are bored today, read on.

There was a touchdown in Dexter, Michigan at roughly 5:50 pm local time. (One county to the west of my location, fortunately/unfortunately.) There was at least one flattened house and several heavily damaged. No deaths that I've heard of. This type of event is, of course, really early in the year for Michigan. The Dexter cell had a slight hook for one or two scans, but merging storms turned everything into a confused mess soon after. The whole complex just slowed to a crawl from that point on too.

I was stuck at work in Dearborn; east of the Dexter storm, waiting for everything to come my way, but as the storm slowed, it began to turn south and I had missed my chance. Also, I was without my junky chase vehicle and not exactly willing to risk my new car chasing in the dark with multiple hail cores dropping unpredictably all around.

Chopper footage:
Watch video >

The tornado:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MlSdoGfVRC4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p3yN3jJhxXA

And a bit of jackassery:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6iujINpmzrk

 

[Jason Harris]

Not small potatoes at all with an EF-3 and EF-2:

http://www.crh.noaa.gov/news/display_cmsstory.php?wfo=dtx&storyid=80731&source=0

I was wondering about why no one forecast this event here on the site? not even nowcasting? It's always interesting to read people's forecasts here, which often make some really sharp predictions.

 

[rdale]

One reason you didn't see anyone forecast it here is because nobody anywhere in any forum, official forecast, chasecast or anything else forecast this It was completely out of the blue given the environment.

 

[Todd Renshaw]

Not small potatoes at all with an EF-3 and EF-2 ...

Yeah, poor choice of words on my part.

One reason you didn't see anyone forecast it here is because nobody anywhere in any forum, official forecast, chasecast or anything else forecast this It was completely out of the blue given the environment.

Oh, I totally forecasted this event. I just didn't blab about it here 'cause I didn't want a bunch of Texas chaser wannabies up here clogging our Michigan roads. I hate chaser convergence. Gonna start my own tour company up here.

Seriously, though ... Rob, I'd love to hear what you think of how all this went down. I remember checking the SPC that morning and seeing the "slight" risk categorical over the eastern lower peninsula. I was thinking "hmm ... interesting ... hey wait a minute, this is March. What the ..." I checked the RUC CAPE plots, saw the pretty colors; okay good. Then I got wrapped up in real work and never got back to it. I figured maybe we'd just have some decent thunderstorms. (Always have one eye on the radar while I'm working and just happened to catch the Dexter storm form a decent velocity couplet.)

 

[rdale]

That's where I was at. Otherwise I'd have been on those storms

Obviously the storm changed directions -- the question is WHY? Nothing out there indicated that potential. Some mentioned lake breezes but those certainly did not exist. And even if they did, the lake breeze would not be sitting in western Livingston Co while storms closer to the lake are chugging unaffected. Maybe something from the storms to the north nudged it and that started the transition? Once it started, I was not surprised to see it die as it ran into the junk near ARB, but I was shocked to see it emerge and still drop a tornado in Monroe Co.

NWS got caught with that one - I sent in reports of confirmed tornado doing damage in Ida for 5 minutes before the warning was issued, and they still ignored that info. They focused on the storm coming out of Tecumseh which had no signs of rotation or deviant motion. Thankfully that one didn't last long.

 

[Steve LaBelle]

Nice job with that footage Nick. I had been eyeballing the cell from Oakland county(due east) for about 30 minutes prior to the radar indicated tornado. I wanted to chase it but was staring into bumper to bumper rush hour traffic on I-696. Not exactly where you want to be with that type of storm.

I figured I would just sit and wait on it since it was heading right at me anyways. Once the hook appeared, the storm radically shifted south/southeast. I've never seen a storm path change so drastically. Was it the converging cell just to the south? Did the actual tornado cause the shift? I'm still at a loss.

Steve