EF0 Tornado — Saginaw, Michigan

2025-05-15 · near St Charles, Saginaw, Michigan

Event narrative

The tornado touched down in the vicinity of Dempsey Road and Walnut Street, southwest of the Kimberly Oaks Golf Club, where numerous soft and hardwood trees were uprooted. A few stands of pine trees were also sheared off. The tornado

continued to track northeast, crossing the Bad River where tree damage was notable from Walnut Street. The tornado then continued northeast across Coal Miners Park, causing additional tree damage. The tornado ended in the vicinity of the neighborhood

north of the park. There was some minor structural damage observed, but the majority of the damage to homes was sustained where large limbs and/or uprooted trees fell on and into homes. Estimated peak winds of 85 mph.

Wider weather episode

A large and deep low pressure system (for mid-May standards) over the Upper Mississippi River Valley spawned severe thunderstorms, including tornadoes. An intense line of thunderstorms tracked across Lake Michigan during the evening of May 15th. This line produced localized wind gusts of 55-75 MPH over southwest lower Michigan, along with several large hail reports (up to 1.75 inches) and several weak tornadoes. As the line moved into southeast Michigan just before midnight, the moderate instability from the daytime heating (max temps reached into lower 80s) began to wane, and the air mass near the surface began to stabilize. This caused the storms to slowly weaken as they tracked through southeast Michigan during the early morning hours of Friday (May 16th). Despite this, four tornadoes were able to develop across parts of Saginaw, Genesee, and Livingston counties, with isolated to scattered severe thunderstorms across the rest of the area. Over all, most of the Detroit Metro area was spared and saw limited wind damage, as DTE energy outages peaked just under 10,000 customers.

View location on OpenStreetMap → (43.2970, -84.1702)

Source: NOAA Storm Events Database, event_id 1259725. Narrative written by the NWS forecast office that issued the report.