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Skywarn – Vernon Tornado

Posted on by MichaelV (Otsego)

We have our annual Skywarn session tomorrow from 10am to noon at the Luella Collins Community Center in Shelbyville – well, not exactly in Shelbyville but a bit northeast of the village at 419 126th Avenue hidden in the woods on the south side of Boot lake.  This session covers the Allegan and Barry county areas.  Below is a map I put together for location, however you can use GPS to get there if you have it.  The hand points to the location…

This land is owned by the Match-E-Be-Nash-She-Wish Band of Pottawatomi Indians of Michigan who also own the Gun Lake Casino.  I have know a few of the members of the tribe over the years and am an honorary member of the tribe via a previous marriage.  It’s a long story I am not going to get into here….

 

 

SKYWARN is a concept developed in the early 1970s that was intended to promote a cooperative effort between the National Weather Service and communities. The emphasis of the effort is often focused on the storm spotter, an individual who takes a position near their community and reports wind gusts, hail size, rainfall, and cloud formations that could signal a developing tornado. Another part of SKYWARN is the receipt and effective distribution of National Weather Service information.

The organization of spotters and the distribution of warning information may lie with the National Weather Service or with an emergency management agency within the community. This agency could be a police or fire department, or often is an emergency management/service group (what people might still think of as civil defense groups). This varies across the country however, with local national weather service offices taking the lead in some locations, while emergency management takes the lead in other areas.

SKYWARN is not a club or organization, however, in some areas where Emergency Management programs do not perform the function, people have organized SKYWARN groups that work independent of a parent government agency and feed valuable information to the National Weather Service. While this provides the radar meteorologist with much needed input, the circuit is not complete if the information does not reach those who can activate sirens or local broadcast systems.

SKYWARN spotters are not by definition “Storm Chasers”. While their functions and methods are similar, the spotter stays close to home and usually has ties to a local agency. Storm chasers often cover hundreds of miles a day. The term Storm Chaser covers a wide variety of people. Some are meteorologists doing specific research or are gathering basic information (like video) for training and comparison to radar data. Others chase storms to provide live information for the media, and others simply do it for the thrill.

Storm Spotting and Storm Chasing is dangerous and should not be done without proper training, experience and equipment.

Yesterday our temps rose to 61° here in Otsego – we had a bit of thunder and a few quick bursts of heavy rain.  Our first tornado of the season touched down in Vernon and was on the ground for 10 minutes and at least 50 structures were damaged.  Luckily there were no fatalities or serious injuries.  Below is the video from WOODTV.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We will see some rain showers today mixing with then changing to snow with light accumulations mainly west of 131.  Saturday will bring a few snow showers with little accumulations…

 

Category: Michigan Weather Forecast

32 thoughts on “Skywarn – Vernon Tornado”

  1. It sure was much colder today. A few to many flurries too. LOL!! I have weeds growing in my rocks so Spring must be just around the corner. 🙂

      1. I only have a one month tolerance of Winter in December, then it can disappear!! Looking forward to the snowbird life in retirement!

  3. Nice merlogical Spring night in lower Michigan …Temp 34* degrees and snow falling out at thee YARDofBRICKS NE GR! No grilling this weekend..INDY!

    1. Let it melt, let it melt, let it melt!!

      That’s what the falling slush is doing as it hits the ground!

    2. I thought you were going up to north to play in the slop, slush and ice for the 740th weekend in a row??

      1. Leaving first thing in the am. Thanks for asking. One more fantastic ski trip! Rock n roll will never die!

  7. Great news for the warm weather fanatics! This will be my last ski trip of the season and then I am throwing in the towel on winter! 15 weeks in a row during an El Niño winter is incredible!! In a few weeks it will be time to transition to golf! Who would have thought!

      2. Boyne and nubs baby! What a great winter up in snow country! Just incredible!

  8. Here at my house I recorded 0.52″ of rain yesterday the high here at my house touched 60. The official readings at GRR was 0.48″ of rain fall and a high of 59° the total snow fall is now 7.3″ for March and 75.8″ for the season. Over at Muskegon they had a record rain fall amount of 1.53″ For March their snow fall is 5.2″ and for the season they are now at 69.4″ and to the east Lansing reported 0.45″ of rain and their snow fall amounts are just 0.6″ for March and just 37.2″ reported for the season. With the official high of 59° yesterday that now puts Mark guess at 59 right on the nose. With Indy’s 57 in second place. The last time it has gotten officially 60 or better here at GR was way back on October 14th
    Slim

  9. At this time I am planning on going to tomorrows spotter training class. I should stand out as I will be wearing a yellow West Michigan Whitecaps hat.
    Slim

  11. The sky was an eerie yellow when that cell went by. I’m glad no one was hurt. I’m more glad that the twister didn’t drop 15 minutes earlier than it did.

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