The National Weather Service — created to protect Americans by forecasting “acts of God” — is an agency that people often love to hate, especially when they plan their day around forecasts and they are wrong.
It can be challenging to outwit God.
And even when the agency’s predictions are right, folks often want to blame the messenger.
But Tuesday, the agency got lots of kudos for doing the very thing that it was designed to do: save lives.
Several public safety officials said that by issuing the most dire tornado alert, “tornado emergency,” the agency was able to give residents in the path of a potentially deadly tornado — a 300-yard wide twister, swirling at 135 mph — the chance to get to safety.
More: After tornadoes tear through west Michigan, emergency workers search through wreckage
While Tuesday’s tornadoes caused much property destruction, mostly in Kalamazoo County, where nearly 200 homes and a FedEx facility were wrecked, officials said Wednesday, there were no serious injuries or loss of life.
Still, to be clear, Bob Dukesherer, the senior forecaster for the weather service in Grand Rapids, told the Free Press that the public shouldn’t stop paying attention to tornado warnings, which also mean, get to safety right away.
“There isn’t like this new magic level that you should take cover when it’s issued,” he said. “You should take cover when any tornado warning is issued. The tornado emergency is just when we see a tornado bearing down on a city and we know it’s on the ground.”
Why issue a tornado emergency?
When it comes to weather, the different alert levels can be confusing.
With a tornado, which can form almost instantly and move on a path of destruction before you realize it, there’s a tornado watch, which, weather watchers hope, give you a little time to prepare. And then there’s a warning, which means, get to safety.
A tornado emergency indicates even more urgency, that a tornado has been spotted and catastrophic damage is imminent, with a dangerous, perhaps deadly, twister headed toward a community. In short, it’s like adding an exclamation point to a sentence. It means: Get to safety, now!
It has been issued in other states, but not Michigan, in part, meteorologists said, because it is relatively new, but also because, usually, when there are tornadoes, radar has suggested they aren’t in the path of a city or will be relatively weak.
Most Michigan tornadoes, the weather service said, tend to be an EF0 or EF1. That’s scientific shorthand for the tornado’s intensity and destructive power as measured on the Enhanced Fujita Scale, a way to measure a tornado’s strength from 0-5 based on several factors introduced in the 1970s by Ted Fujita.
Tuesday, the forecasters said, all indications were that a storm was coming and headed toward a populated area, where, in this case, people were living in hundreds of mobile homes, one of the more vulnerable structures to be in when a tornado hits.
A rare but effective alert
Weather service meteorologists in Michigan said they weren’t sure when the first tornado emergency was issued nationally. It goes back at least to 1999, when a super strong tornado struck communities just south of Oklahoma City.
Since then, it has been issued sparingly.
But it might be important to someone living in a mobile home or a house without a basement — structures that are especially vulnerable to tornadoes because they can be ripped apart — because a few minutes of warning can make all the difference.
In Pavilion Township, where 3,000 people live in the Pavilion Estates Mobile Home Community, safety officials said warning certainly helped.
By Thursday, weather service officials determined, three tornadoes touched down in Michigan. There was an EF2 tornado in Kalamazoo County, which went about 11 miles, and, if it were spinning just 1 mph faster, it would have been classified an EF3.
One tornado was in St. Joseph and Branch counties, classified as an EF1, spinning 95 mph for 1 mile and 100 yards wide, and the other was in Cass County, also an EF1, spinning 95 mph, but going for 11 miles and at 950 yards was was widest of the three.
“We don’t like to see tornadoes, but it’s why we do what we do,” Dukesherer said. “We’re in the business of trying to save lives. When we hit the button on a warning it goes out in a multitude of ways. And when a tornado warning is issued, people need to take cover.”
Contact Frank Witsil: 313-222-5022 or fwitsil@freepress.com.
This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Michigan tornado emergency: What National Weather Service alert means