GRAND RAPIDS (WKZO-AM) — The National Weather Service says tornadoes blew through West Michigan Saturday afternoon, bouncing along the country side, leaving a trail of downed branches and uprooted trees and blowing off a few roofs but for the most part leaving homes and businesses undamaged.
NWS Meteorologist Cort Scholten says the most intense storms tracked from Bangor in Van Buren County into Grand Junction, through Allegan County a few miles West of Holland. There may have been touchdowns near Fennville and Hamilton.
The storm cell appears to have dropped another twister just to the east of Byron Center and then drove into the Grand Rapids metro area.
That’s where most of the damage occurred because of the concentration of people and their homes and businesses.
Old growth trees fell on homes, on vehicles and on power lines. Business signs were blown out of their frames, but there were no major reports of structural damage.
Consumers Energy is reporting over 30,000 customers without power primarily in Kent County but there are also outages in Van Buren and Allegan County.
There are no outages or damage reported in Kalamazoo County.
Utility Spokesman Roger Morgenstern says some customers may not have their power restored until Monday or Tuesday.
They are issuing warnings for residents who were in the track of the storm to avoid all lines that may be down until they can be assessed. There have been no injuries reported so far, but history shows that far more people are injured after storms, doing clean-up or coming into contact with downed power lines, than are actually injured or killed by the storms themselves.
There are also dangers associated with the use of gasoline powered generators. Make sure they are operated outside, so there can be no build-up of dangerous carbon monoxide in living spaces.
Crews from the National Weather Service are inspecting the damage to try and determine how many tornadoes there were, how intense they may have been and where they tracked.
