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| Ariel view of river flooding affected several houses in Michigan recently. The state has really been socked by several damaging, sometimes deadly storms this spring. |
This year, especially since March, Michigan seems to have run afoul of Ma Nature's good graces
The storms that got the most publicity - and were the most tragic - were the tornadoes across southern Michigan on March 6, killing four people and destroying neighborhoods. Especially in Three Rivers and Union City, Michigan.
A new storm swept through Michigan last weekend, causing widespread flooding and dropping a tornado. The twister last Saturday, April 4 in Van Burn Township, Wayne County in southeast Michigan. It was and EF-1 with winds of 100 mph and a path running three miles long.
The flooding in the past week might be the worst of it all. There were dozens of incidents scattered across Michigan, mostly in the western, central and southern parts of the state. Dozens of homes received at least some damage. Especially along the Grand River in Michigan, which touched major flood stage.
As in many spells of bad weather, Michigan residents last weekend saw a series of flood-related incidents that seemed to hopscotch across the state.
Heavy rain flooded a large parking lot at an apartment complex in East Lansing, Michigan, destroying a few dozen cars. It was unfortunately the third time in two years residents had their cars wrecked by flooding.
The animal rescue group Detroit Animal Welfare Group in Macombe County, Michigan suffered severe flooding,
It took 16 hours to make sure all the animals had been moved to safe location, but on the bri Took 16 hours to get animals to safety at the 25 acre farm.
A washout on railroad tracks in western Michigan forced Amtrak to suspend service between Grand Rapids and Chicago for several dahs.
It wasn't just severe weather and flooding over the past month or so.
Easily one of the worst blizzards in Michigan history hit the Upper Peninsula on March 14-17. Some areas received up to four feet of snow. High winds piled the show into enormous drifts. Roads were shut down for days.
On the southern edge of the blizzard, an ice storm cut power to 120,000 hones and businesses.
The rough weather didn't stay in Michigan, since storms tend to be more far-ranging than just one state. Wisconsin, Ohio, Pennsylvania and western New York all had a brutal series of storms over the past few weeks.
Western New York has had an especially tough go of it. The first March tornado in the state since 1976 touched down on the 31st, and the town of Gowanda and surrounding areas suffered serious damage to homes, buildings and cars as thunderstorm winds of more than 70 mph drove torrents of hailstones bigger than golf balls through the area.
Oneida Lake, a little northeast of Syracuse in New York, is flooding. Strong winds sent waves from the lake into homes in Sylvan Beach, New York, damaging several of them. Sea walls also collapsed under the onslaught.
Back in Michigan, it's not over. Weather patterns during a particular season sometimes get "stuck." In this case, a pool of very cold air - basically what's left of the winters polar vortex - has been swirling around near or north of Hudson Bay for weeks.
Meanwhile, a broad southwesterly flow has helped pull warmth and moisture from the Gulf of Mexico. Where those two polar opposite types of air come closest to each other, you get storms. More often than not though the late winter and spring, that stormy air mass meeting spot has been in or near Michigan.
That will still be more or less the case over the next week, though now that we're later into the spring, the warmer air is winning out in Michigan. Their biggest threats are severe storms and flooding over the next week or so. The worst of it appears as it it will be early next week.
A rough, snowy winter and that March blizzard means there's still quite a bit of snow left on the ground on the state's Upper Peninsula.
Warmer temperatures, rain and thunderstorms starting later in the weekend and continuing into next week will melt more snow and raise rivers to flood levels. (There was still three feet of snow on the ground in Marquette, Michigan as of Wednesday, so there's still a lot of snow to melt).
Places like Wisconsin, Ohio, northwest Pennsylvania and western New York have been caught in this web of storms, too. But Michigan seems to be Ground Zero. Here in Vermont, we're on the outer eastern edge of this persistent storm track. That means we'll have a frequent chance of showers, but it doesn't look like we're under the gun for any extreme weather.
Looking further ahead, wetter than normal conditions are expected in Michigan for at least the next two weeks, if not beyond that.
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