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Subscribe to RSSA series of tornadoes tore through southeastern Michigan Thursday, damaging more than 100 homes and sending people racing for cover. The Weather Channel's Mike Seidel reports.
Updated at 7:58 a.m. ET: A tornado ripped through a rural Michigan community Thursday evening, damaging or demolishing many homes, downing trees and power lines, sparking fires and flooding roads.
A dispatcher with the Washtenaw County Sheriff's Department told Reuters that "there are homes leveled" in Dexter, which is located northwest of Ann Arbor. The Detroit Free Press linked to a YouTube video of a twister.
Sheriff's spokesman Derrick Jackson told The Associated Press that 105 homes were significantly damaged in Dexter and the surrounding area, and 13 were destroyed.
Washtenaw County Sheriff's Deputy Ray Yee was first on the scene when he noticed a solitary hand sticking out of the rubble of a destroyed home. He said he reached for the hand and pulled out an elderly man who was shaken but able to walk.
"That's the best part," Yee told the AP. "Every place I went to, I would have thought I would have found somebody laying there - deceased or whatever. But, knock on wood, everybody was OK."
Officials said around 200 people were displaced and a temporary shelter was opened at a nearby middle school. Police and fire crews were going door to door to check for any victims.
Thunderstorm watches and warnings were in effect for several counties in southeast Michigan, said ClickOnDetroit, the website for NBC station WDIV.
There were multiple reports of funnel clouds and two reports of touchdowns in Monroe County, Emergency Management Director Mark Hammond said. There, a funnel cloud moved across the expressway and badly damaged one home and turned over several vehicles.
In Washtenaw County, where Dexter is located, the tornado started as a thunderstorm watch, which turned into a thunderstorm warning, then a tornado warning – a series of warnings that extended for an hour and a half.
Aerial footage shows at least a dozen homes were heavily damaged when a tornado touched down in Dexter, Mich.
Marc Breckenridge, director of Emergency Management for Washtenaw County, told weather.com that there were no initial reports of injuries. "We've got public safety crews out right now being very thorough to make sure that everyone is accounted for," he added.
Emergency management officials told NBC News that the county is a "storm-ready community" that has invested in an outdoor weather alarm and that takes storm preparation seriously.
Softball-sized hail
Thunderstorms also produced softball-sized hail near Flint, Mich., weather.com reported. "We've had several large hail reports," meteorologist Amos Dodson added.
Forecasters also issued a severe storm watch on Thursday afternoon for parts of Indiana, Kentucky and Tennessee, warning of possible large hail, wind gusts of up to 70 miles an hour and dangerous lightning in a region raked by deadly tornadoes less than two weeks ago.
In Chicago, the official temperature at O'Hare International Airport on Thursday afternoon was 79 degrees, 5 degrees above the previous record for the day, and Indianapolis topped out at 80 degrees, 3 degrees above the old record.
In Washington, D.C., temperatures reached an all-time high, and in less than a week more than 900 new record highs have been tied or broken. NBC's Brian Williams reports.
Dave Samuhel, a meteorologist at Accuweather.com said the warm air covering much of the country's midsection was helping fuel the storms the Weather Service warned about on Thursday.
"It's just so warm that we're seeing thunderstorms pop up like popcorn the way you see it in the summertime," he said.
'Warming up mighty early' across parts of US
Accuweather.com said the unseasonably warm weather west of the Plains would continue into next week and spread further east into places like New York City, where residents were experiencing a more typical spring day on Thursday as winds out of the northeast kept daytime highs in the 40s.
Weather.com, msnbc.com staff, Reuters and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
More content from msnbc.com and NBC News
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Tornado? I hate it when that happens.
Your missing the point" its rare , does that sound like a tongue twister
Your - adj. The possessive form of you. 1. Used as a modifier before a noun: your boots; your accomplishments. 2. A person's; one's: The light switch is on your right.
You're - Contraction of you are.
Take a wild guess as to which is the correct word to use in the incomplete, improperly punctuated, run-on sentence:
@scales67
Don't be such a dick. If you have something to contribute to the discussion, do so, otherwise, keep your grammatical rules to yourself.
yes, how dare you assume that someone would care to improve there righting! [/sarc]
YAY! a grammar nazi...folks are dead and homes are destroyed and this nitwit is concerned with the use of your/you're/you are...how special. These folks should have been worried about the next snow fall this time of year, not tornados. My heart goes out to everyone there.
I think people like scales must have been very badly jilted by either a spelling bee or an English teacher..
I should of left your out..
I had one just miss me on the way back to college on Easter Sunday 1965. Missed by about little more than a minute. Killed two at the intersection that I'd just passed.
I attended a wedding in Xenia, Ohio some 30 years after that big one that went through there in 1974. I'm not from there, but I couldn't stop watching for storm clouds.
I remember the Xenia tornado (actually hearing about it on the news). Later I met a guy up on Mackinac Island that went through it. The thing was at least a mile wide. There were tornadoes in that part of Ohio on March 2nd 2012 as well.
As for the tornado in Dexter - I was taken by the people partying their butts off as the tornado came right for them.
Here in West Michigan we don't get that many of them because the Lake tends to stabilize the air just down wind of it. We did have one, actually several F4 & F5 tornadoes on April 3 1956. The biggest one tore through the NW side of Grand Rapids and some of the outlying communities and killed a bunch of people. There were several long-track violent tornadoes all over SW Michigan that day. Anyway, over here tornadoes are a novelty, whereas over in the SE part of the state they're commonplace.
I remember the Xenia tornado too. My brother attended college near there. We had to go down to pick him up from Lansing Michigan. I have never seen such destruction. My brother was injured as something went right through his arm. Could have been worse for him though. I worked there a few years later and was amazed how fast the place was rebuilt. The stories my co-workers told me were horrific. My thoughts and prayers go out to all effected in this latest one.
No reports of injuries or deaths, basements are life savers. There is a lot more damage than this report suggests. There were several businesses lost in Dexter, and I think there are more than just a dozen houses damaged, there was other video locally that showed this.
Glad nobody was injured. My sympathies to those whose homes were wrecked. A spooky reminder of another Michigan tornado, also in March, way back in 1976. That one wrecked my parents' home and many of our neighbors' too.
Those who believe the Saginaw Valley will never get a tornado will be proven wrong this year. We are in a pattern that is going to prove these people wrong. I hope everyone is ok. These storms missed the town I am in by about 50 miles.
Oh dont say that!!!! I go to school at SVSU :/
One of the neighborhoods in the village of Dexter was hit hard - maybe 75+ homes damaged, many homes destroyed. It appears that a twister hopped around and wound its way through the neighborhood, destroying some homes, but sparing other homes in the same path. Does not appear that anyone was seriously hurt, which is a surprise because it looks like a "war zone." But, will know more, tomorrow.
Let us not forget history of Illinois and this region. Joseph Smith hanged for crimes, cultism, adultry, bigamty, polygamy, stealing boys and girls and putting them into insestual and deviant sex acts. stealing cattle and dowery, peace of mind taken across the country. Today and tomorrow your inheritance and offstpring, the threat of his Mormonism cultist mind thoughts and actions. As never before true faiths. Protect your nation, form of government, your reigious rights.
God may give us an economic down turn and wars that we have not seen before. They Mormons that practice these and putting this into our government and Judicial system the worse threat and down turn this nation has ever seen.
Storms will rise in this year and those to follow in ways it has never occurred in the history of this nation.
World impact can you perceive this. Look at where their missionaries are. The mask will be peeled off after the election if Romney and his Mormonism is elected. For the sake of God.
God sent a hurricane to New Orleans to punish them for being the new Sodom and Gomorrah. Hurricanes, storms, tornadoes, wildfires and droughts that hit parts of the country that we don't have any political or religious issues with are just unfortunate acts of nature.
Good trolling though. :)
You should have more fear of tornadoes than Mormons or Romney. This act of nature is not punishment for Romney being a native son.
Get a life, shar walker. This is neither the time or place to try and turn this story into something political.
Really Shar? REALLY??? Are you serious or are you just using some sort of sick humor? Don't you realize how stupid you make ALL radical religeous nuts sound? Really, it is all about climate change brought on by the radical left-wingers to cause more loss of American industry and more drilling. That my friends is sarcasm.
While I agree that this is not the time and place for such commentary, I happen to be enjoying the cannibalistic aspect of this campaign cycle looming in the shadows of the GOP. Putting such emphasis on religious based initiatives will splinter the party and illustrate why we will not allow religion to govern this nation.
Global Cooling !!!
Shar Walker - What do Mormons have to do with tornadoes? I don't get the connection.
Just another anti-Mormon spewing his/her religious hatred.
I was wondering that myself. Not a fan of Mittens, but really tornadoes?
But mr grover, the gop, & the rushbo will say global cooling. After the article just said temperatures exceeded the highest highs by 5 degrees they say global cooling. I tell you goya got it right. The illogical speak the loudest. You hardly hear al gore saying anything.
Pray that there is no death and no injury.
Prayer is useless. God's "Will", divine plan and the rest of the verbiage.
lived through a tornado and a hurricane and wont stand in line to do either one again
Hope everyone has an emergency plan in place. As we've seen with the outbreak in late April last year through the south of such violent, long-tracking tornadoes, then this year, beginning in JANUARY and the devastation in IN, KY and TN earlier this month---It's going to be a 'bumpy' Spring!
I know I'm prepared. Even have me a couple leather straps anchored to my poured wall in my home built shelter in our basement like Bill Paxton and Helen Hunt used in that well house in "Twister," lol! (figured what the heck!)
I live about 90 miles north of there and it has not gotten over 50 degrees here all week.
warm here, too. 82 degrees. can't remember when it has been this warm in the month of March. just two years ago we had record snow, i.e. 52 inches. broke previous records of 1996.
I can't imagine softball size hail. That alone would do alot of damage.Hope everyone is ok.
Lilacs blooming in Milwaukee, the cherry blossom tress out in full flower in DC, mosquitoes here in Columbus and it's only mid-March! The March madness we should be concerned about is not the NCAA tournament, it's the weather extremes we are experiencing and the extremists in the Republican Party who continue to deny the reality of global climate change! I don't know how much evidence they want! They seem to have the "evidence" to support their claims that they can return gasoline to $2.50 a gallon, but the phenological and climatological data strongly point to global climate change accelerated by human generated greenhouse gases...
Prayers for those in Dexter and Monroe.
People should know that being a "storm ready community" doesn't include any requirement for storm shelters for the people. It certainly doesn't mean you have a FEMA 320 "safe room" in your home, which in any case might be too far from a community shelter - it it existed. More info at EFTornadoSafeHome.com.
Here is something to learn about: concrete homes and better construction practices. Search the web.
******
Not that it matters,now but radio active gas , spewing into the air is not a good thing, And all your microwave cell towers could never cause any problems, could they. after all we need our cell phones and WiFi now dont we???
HEY Dumb azz.. ever heard of H A A R P !!
Anyone have the streets that were hardest hit....I'm a Dexter HS grade....hope all folks escaped with little to no injuries and nonly material damage which can be mostly repaired and replaced...
In summary, from what I have heard up to now, the laundromat was taken out, and Dexter Mill is badly damaged. The subdivision behind LaFontaine Chevrolet took a direct hit too. A few scattered reports of damage up and down Mast Road and around downtown too.
It's been 70 to 8o degrees here in Grand Rapids, MI all week. I'm loving it, but I'm also concerned about the weather patterns. We had a thunderstorm earlier this week that had some freakish clouds - one beginning of a funnel that didn't fully develop or touch down, cloud "walls" (if that makes sense), very heavy rainfall blowing sideways, etc. We are expecting more unseasonably warm weather all next week, so I am hoping it will be calm.
My thoughts are with all who lost their homes in the recent weeks. Apparently, Mother Nature is PI$$ED!
Simply put, both the high pressure systems and the low pressure systems that create them have become much deeper and larger in area than 2 -3 decades ago.
And I bet the satellite pictures from the 1980s compared to the ones today will prove the size part, especially as they come across the pacific
And so now it is 80 in Chicago in winter because of one of those amplified high pressure systems got so damned big it shoved a March tornado into Michigan instead of Oklahoma where it should be this time of year by 20th century standards