Thunderstorms produced isolated wind damage, large hail and areas of heavy rain Thursday evening/night in West Michigan. The sorms disrupted many of the opening season high school football games.
There was one report of tennis-ball sized hail in SW Newaygo Co. That may be the biggest hail ever reported in Newaygo County!
Also – Golfball-sized hail in Twin Lake and Kent City, 1″ diameter hail near Greenville, 7/8ths” diameter hail near Indian Lakes in N. Kent Co., 3/4″ diameter hail in Whitehall and Montague with small hail near Wabasis Lake and Eaton Rapids. The above pic. is from Blue Lake Township in Muskegon County. Wind damage was reported near Grant, Palo, Lincoln Lake, Belding, Ionia, East Gr. Rapids, Leslie, Grattan, Freeport and Hubbardston. There was also a period of vivid lightning centered on Allegan and Barry Counties.
As of 2 pm Fri. – there were 1,127 Consumers Energy customers without power, including 553 in Ionia Co. and 238 in Kent Co.
Here’s some rainfall totals in one hour or less. It really came down in sheets, pushed along by winds of 30-45 mph (higher in a few spots). At one point over 7,500 Consumers Energy customers lost power.
Most people saw some rain. The exception was a few spots in mainly Berrien and Van Buren County. The areas in yellow on the map above were areas that saw hail reports.
There were a handful of severe t-storm warnings, including one for S. Newaygo Co. Chuck Russell took this pic. of a rotating wall cloud. I believe this is the same storm that produced the large hail southwest of Fremont. There were some trees down on Gordon Road west of M-37 and just north of Grant. There were also several spots in Ionia Co. with trees and wires down.
The top picture is a shelf cloud from Alexandra Cunningham. That’s a dark sky.
Here’s some tree damage west of Greenville (from Linda Guiliano).
This is a pic. of the storm approaching a farm – by Dustin Meyers More storm pics. and comments here.