Ferocious Storms Ahead: Tornadoes, Power Outages, and Golf Ball-Sized Hail in Several States
United States: A formidable storm front roared across Michigan, lashing the state with tempestuous winds and plunging thousands into darkness as electrical grids faltered in multiple regions.
Tornado advisories ignited alarms in Livingston, northeastern Saginaw, southern Bay, and southeastern Midland counties until shortly before 1 am, with Saginaw County’s warning lasting until the top of the hour. These alerts have since lapsed.
As dawn approached Friday, nearly 200,000 Consumers Energy patrons found themselves without power, as revealed by the utility’s outage portal. The core of these outages appeared to concentrate from west Michigan to a diagonal band that stretched between Kalamazoo and Ann Arbor. DTE Energy reported comparatively fewer impacts, noting approximately 1,000 clients in the dark, according to detroitnews.com.
By 10:30 pm, the National Weather Service had sounded urgent tornado warnings across parts of Kent (northeast and southern), Montcalm (northwest), Eaton (northeast), Allegan (northeast), Ionia (southern), and Barry (northeast) counties. A separate alert included Ingham County, remaining active until 12:15 am Friday.
The advisories pointed to radar-confirmed supercells with tornado potential sweeping eastward.
Calhoun County’s northeastern stretch also found itself under a tornado alert as the storm intensified.