Weather reporting

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Enhanced risk of severe weather (level 3 on a 5 level scale) for areas along & south of M-59 for Wednesday.

Best risk in my opinion is along and south of I-94. Biggest threat is damaging straight-line winds.

Been busy lately…

[bmw]

This looks like a nasty setup for tomorrow. Main event between 7 and 10 PM.

[MWmetalhead]

Derecho perhaps?

Enhanced risk now goes as far north as about M-57.

[Colonel Flagg]

Derecho perhaps?

Enhanced risk now goes as far north as about M-57.

I've seen this show before. A couple of old sheds get blown across I-96 near the Webberville/Stockbridge exit. Pontoon boats get loose from their moorings on White Lake, Union Lake, Walled Lake, whatever. Basements in Redford and Dearborn Heights take on high water. No rain, but wind gusts cause a silver maple tree to split in half somewhere around Seaholm High School, leaving 100,000+ DTE customers without power. Storms move into Canada.

End of report.

[MWmetalhead]

That might not be too far off from what actually occurs tomorrow.

Tomorrow's system could also be a dud. There is some weather model output that in the eyes of the NWS seems unreasonable, and if the NWS's suspicions are confirmed, this could turn out to be a pretty measly event tomorrow.

[MWmetalhead]

Looks like the worst weather occurred in Washtenaw and Wayne Counties. About 20 percent of utility customers in Washtenaw and about 15 percent in Wayne are without power. In Oakland, outages are currently fewer than 250 customers.

Some of the damage shown on TV near the Detroit - Redford Two border sure looks like tornado damage and not straight line wind damage. My guess would be a brief low end EF-1 tornado with peak winds around 90 mph.

[Mega Hertz]

Still semi storming in Brighton. Once again, skies looked bad but was nothing more than a torrential downpour.

Matt is welcome to come sleep in my music room if his power doesn't come back on. Plenty of Wolverine memorabilia down there to check out.

[ZenithCKLW]

I was working at home in Livonia when I heard a H*** crash, and a few more crashes outside. Large tree limbs damaged my truck and impaled my garage roof, so now I have a hole in the roof. We had a lot to clean up before it got dark and the next round was due to come through.

The neighbor’s H*** front yard tree fell on their house and lifted the sod with it. Weird sight. There is a H*** cottonwood tree in Hines Park behind me; a H*** heavy limb broke off and flew about 80 feet over the house into the front yard. I was amazed a branch that size blew that distance over the house. My neighbor thinks we had a tornado because she reports debris swirling around, but I think she might be stretching that.

Been out of power since about 3:45.

[Mega Hertz]

I was working at home in Livonia when I heard a H*** crash, and a few more crashes outside. Large tree limbs damaged my truck and impaled my garage roof, so now I have a hole in the roof. We had a lot to clean up before it got dark and the next round was due to come through.

The neighbor’s H*** front yard tree fell on their house and lifted the sod with it. Weird sight. There is a H*** cottonwood tree in Hines Park behind me; a H*** heavy limb broke off and flew about 80 feet over the house into the front yard. I was amazed a branch that size blew that distance over the house. My neighbor thinks we had a tornado because she reports debris swirling around, but I think she might be stretching that.

Been out of power since about 3:45.

Jesus, dude. I'm sorry to hear that. I'm glad you're safe, though.

[MWmetalhead]

That's awful, ZenithCKLW. Very sorry to hear of that damage. Thanks for the info, and best of luck with the cleanup (and dealing with your insurer).

[ZenithCKLW]

Yea it blows. Pun intended, LOL. I appreciate the well-wishes.

I've lived here for 15 years, and this well-maintained, well-constructed, nice Livonia neighborhood has historically been uneventful and boring in even powerful storms. I lost power maybe 3 times in about 12-13 of those years, and never for an extended period of time. But in the past 2-3 years or so, the storms have been so powerful that we have been experiencing more damage and our electricity frequently goes out for extended periods of time. Water in the basement has been becoming a more frequent problem, although surprisingly the basement was completely dry through this storm. Power hasn't returned yet.

I frequently hear people say things like "yea yea yea, basements will flood, tree branches will break, wind will blow. No big deal, it's [insert Michigan season here], just move on." Well, these events impact the lives of real people, it's destructive, it interrupts work and lives, and it will repeat. Yes, we have heard of these events many times over our lifetimes, so it's easy to say "ho hum, same story, what's new?" I disregard the opinions of these dismissive people. Constantly keeping the house well maintained after such destructive events wears on you, and you begin to panic and wonder at every rain, even after building back better. I've got IoT cameras and sensors and alarms all over the house to keep an eye on it while I'm gone, as I will be next week.

The local media doesn't really do a great job of being clear what the actual threat will be, which is probably limited by our current technology. The media doesn't do a great job of educating people how to deal with the aftermath of these events. But these events will continue, will get worse, and will impact more people more frequently as they have to me.

I have a well-paying, full time job, but it's going to rain again tomorrow, power is still out, and I have a hole in the roof.

[MWmetalhead]

Livonia got hit by the apex of the bow echo, which is the same part of the system that rolled thru Ann Arbor. It is common for the strongest winds to occur with that part of the squall line.

I think some local weathercasters during morning newscasts undersold the mid afternoon storms and oversold the early evening storms in terms of threats. I've noticed high resolution forecast models often exaggerate the intensity of storms - especially any secondary wave - that immediately precedes cold front passage. They often show the second wave being on par with or stronger than the first wave, and in actuality, this frequently turns out to be wrong (at times, there turns out to be no second wave).

Once warnings were issued, I thought 4 was excellent and 7 was pretty good in dispensing info. I did not tune into 2 or 62.

[OnTopic]

Both 2 and 62 broke in with 4 and 7. I flipped between them all a little bit and all stations did very well. I would say the weakest was 2 only because they did not seem to go as in-depth as the other three.

[ZenithCKLW]

Well, as good as 4 and 7 may have been, I have no access to that info. Power is out, TV is unavailable. Even though I have an antenna on my roof (or what's left of said antenna now), virtually all TV's today plug in to AC, not battery. Digital converters for older TV's plug in to AC. My local mobile network seems to go down any time we lose power... I think the cell tower is on the same part of the grid as us, so I couldn't use that. The network seemed to return to some capacity late last night, and seems to be hobbling along right now.

Last night, I had a battery radio I use for DX'ing. That's the extent of available useful technology in this event. And our EAS station, WJR, had Mitch rambling about aliens and Mark Levin bitching about cancel culture with Fox News every 30 minutes. I tried WWJ but the reports were short and not particularly useful.

[km1125]

Wish you luck on getting power back sooner than later, and hope you don't have hassles with the insurance trying to get the roof restored!

... But in the past 2-3 years or so, the storms have been so powerful that we have been experiencing more damage and our electricity frequently goes out for extended periods of time. Water in the basement has been becoming a more frequent problem, although surprisingly the basement was completely dry through this storm. Power hasn't returned yet.

I frequently hear people say things like "yea yea yea, basements will flood, tree branches will break, wind will blow. No big deal, it's [insert Michigan season here], just move on." Well, these events impact the lives of real people, it's destructive, it interrupts work and lives, and it will repeat. Yes, we have heard of these events many times over our lifetimes, so it's easy to say "ho hum, same story, what's new?" ....

I think we're seeing the confluence of a couple things, especially related to the power. One, the infrastructure is getting older and more widespread as development continues to spread, but all the tree growth affects all area. Had several neighbors lose larger trees in the last couple storms and ten years ago those trees were pretty small. I think the root systems never really get established like "old growth" so when those trees get tall they're a lot easier to knock the whole thing over rather than lose a branch or two.

With DTE specifically, they had a number of years where their tree contractors were bonused on how many miles of plant they cleared every year. So, naturally, they went after the "easy" stuff which is street-side and got a lot of "miles" cleared. Left a lot of more difficult areas to overgrow. Those more difficult areas are more of the smaller distribution lines rather than the transmission lines, so you end up with a lot more smaller outages when the trees blow around. They've been trying to play "catch up" the last couple years but I don't think they're even close to caught up with that kind of maintenance.