TornadoLookup

Home / Michigan / Ingham

EF0 tornado in Ingham County, Michigan

Tornado May 29, 2011 · Ingham County, Michigan

EF0
Rating
3.3 mi
Whole path
100 yd
Path width
$75K
Damage as recorded

NOAA records this tornado county by county. Its path ran through Ingham County → Shiawassee County; the totals above are for the whole tornado.

EF0EF1EF2EF3EF4EF5Unrated

The path drawn at its surveyed width of 100 yards (0.06 mi) — zoom in and the swath grows to true scale. Other tornadoes recorded nearby that day are shown faint.

What EF0 means. On the Enhanced Fujita scale, EF0 is light damage: shingles and siding peeled, gutters torn, branches broken, consistent with estimated gusts of 65–85 mph. The rating comes from a survey of the worst damage after the storm, not from a wind measurement, so it says as much about what the tornado hit as about how strong it was.

What the National Weather Service wrote

A small tornado touched down in extreme northern Ingham county before crossing over into Shiawassee county. Trees were snapped in a 100 yard wide area, and both a residence and a barn had their roofs partially blown off.

The wider storm

Severe thunderstorms developed during the mid to late afternoon hours of May 29 from Vicksburg east northeast to Battle Creek and Charlotte. An NWS storm survey found significant damage resulting from straight line wind damage resulting from severe thunderstorm winds of up to 85 to 100 mph. A state of emergency was declared for Calhoun county due to widespread wind damage.

The storms developed north of a warm front that separated mild weather to the north of it from hot weather south of the boundary. The storms traveled into northern Illinois just after noon, and then moved across southern lower Michigan between 2 pm and 6 pm. The storms strengthened as they reached far southern lower Michigan as they encountered warmer and more humid air. The NWS Grand Rapids storm survey teams found no conclusive evidence of any tornadoes from southern Kalamazoo county east northeast through Calhoun county and up into Eaton and Ingham counties. Nearly 40,000 people across Calhoun county lost power due to all the wind damage and lightning.

Began near Bell Oak (42.7736, -84.2650).

Source: NOAA Storm Events Database, event 297437. Narratives are written by the National Weather Service forecast office that issued the report.

Tornadoes near your address

See every tornado that passed near a place you know, measured to its path.