EF1 Tornado — Oakland, Michigan

2021-07-24 · near White Lake, Oakland, Michigan

Event narrative

A tornado touched down 1 mile NNE of White Lake just west of the intersection of Teggerdine Rd and Pontiac Lake Rd. The tornado began as an EF-0 in which several healthy trees were uprooted and snapped. The tornado then tracked southeast toward a neighborhood at the intersection of Pontiac Lake Rd and Howland Blvd where it produced EF-1 damage, including shingle and roof damage, garage damage with one garage door completely blown off, and numerous healthy trees uprooted and snapped. Peak winds were estimated at 100 mph. A house was damaged when multiple pine trees fell onto it, resulting in one minor injury. The tornado then tracked to the northeast and crossed Pontiac Lake Rd before tracking across Pontiac Lake as an EF-0, in which it produced shingle damage and uprooted numerous trees in neighborhoods located on the peninsula north of Pontiac Lake Rd along Buckingham St and a second peninsula off of Gale Rd near Tackles Dr. The tornado then tracked northeast of the peninsulas and lifted while over the water on Pontiac Lake prior to reaching Gale Rd.

Wider weather episode

An active severe weather season for Southeast Michigan continued on July 24, 2021 with another round of severe thunderstorms and tornadoes. Thunderstorms initially developed mid-afternoon just south of Cadillac and tracked southeastward into the Tri-Cities and Metro Detroit regions through the evening. Storms began as a broken line and strengthened quickly as they moved into a region of favorable dynamics and ample instability. Embedded rotation within this line produced three confirmed tornadoes in White Lake, Armada, and Clayton Township. An additional tornado spun up over Port Austin. Numerous reports of straight-line wind damage, namely power outages and tree damage, were also observed with many of these reports coming from western Oakland County. As the line of storms tracked south of I-94, the tornado threat diminished; although bowing segments embedded within the line continued to produce damaging wind gusts. In addition to wind damage, most areas observed 1-2 inches (with locally higher amounts) of rainfall which led to flash flooding in some low-lying and flood-prone areas. At least 140,000 DTE customers lost power at the height of the storms. Between the tornadoes and wind damage, Oakland county was estimated sustaining close to 10 million dolllars in damage, with around 4.5 million across Macomb county.

View location on OpenStreetMap → (42.6699, -83.4966)

Source: NOAA Storm Events Database, event_id 974718. Narrative written by the NWS forecast office that issued the report.