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Michigan weather radar blindspots meant no warning for Deckerville tornado

This screenshot from a video taken by Doug Confer of the Deckerville Fire Department shows a tornado touching down in Deckerville on Saturday. Blindspots in the state weather radar network meant meteorologists couldn’t warn residents before the twister struck. Photo courtesy of Doug Confer.

������Austin Rowlader (Bridge Michigan)

An F-1 tornado touched down in Deckerville last Saturday without warning from local officials or the National Weather Service.

No one was injured in the storm, but the tornado caused widespread damage as it traveled on the ground for three minutes between 4:18 and 4:21 p.m. It traveled 1.7 miles and reached maximum wind speeds of 95 miles per hour, but the only heads up residents received was a statement — not a warning — from the Weather Service about two minutes before touchdown.

That because the Doppler radar meteorologists use to predict storms doesn’t reach everywhere in the state, and Deckerville falls in the middle of a blindspot in the Thumb. Other blindspots exist in Marquette in the Upper Peninsula and in a broad swath of the northwest Lower Peninsula.

Jaclyn Anderson, warning coordination meteorologist with the Weather Service office in Pontiac, wouldn’t call the portion of Michigan Thumb where Deckerville resides a “radar gap,” but she did say her office does “run into radar limitations.”

A Kentucky company hopes to soon install new radar equipment in Michigan that should at least minimize those blindspots.

But, on Saturday, Deckerville residents were caught unaware.

Deckerville resident and business owner Dominic Lewis didn’t find out about the tornado until someone sent him a video of the twister in a text message.

“I was really surprised it had already come through town … it was shocking,” he said. “You kind of expect that Doppler got your back, but then you find out there are times when technology doesn’t work. Then it like, ‘Oh, wonder what we can do to fix that.’”

‘Unwarned tornadoes’

Anderson, of the Weather Service, said Deckerville received no tornado warning “due to the weak rotation observed on radar and absence of real-time reports.”

“The challenge we face is that, the farther we are away from the radar, the less we can observe in the low levels, which is where tornadoes develop,” she said.

She referred to the way Doppler radar interacts with the curvature of the Earth. Doppler sends radio waves horizontally from its location, but, as the earth curves away from the lowest radar beams, a gap forms at lower levels of the atmosphere.

Deckerville is about 70 miles from the nearest radars in Exeter, Canada and Pontiac. Meteorologists could only see readings above 4,700 feet from the Exeter radar and above 6,100 feet from the radar in Pontiac.

“This is significantly higher than the 500 to 1,000 feet where the tornado developed,” Anderson said.

Michigan Storm Chasers was tracking the storm live but crews were unable to see the low-level rotation because of that radar gap.

Storm Chasers founder Ryan Harriott said “the Thumb of Michigan has a notorious reputation for being home of ‘under the radar’ tornadoes.”

He pointed to two tornadoes in Port Austin in 2021 and another in Bad Axe in 2015 that went undetected because of the storm distance from the radar.

“Technology limitations have been around for decades,” he said. “Unwarned tornadoes have, can, and will continue to happen because of it.”

‘Looking to illuminate the … atmosphere’

The only way to fix limitations in radar coverage is to install more radars.

Chris Goode, founder and CEO of Climavision, a weather radar company based in Louisville, Kentucky, is hoping to do just that.

“You have to think of radar like a flashlight,” he said. “The current network just can’t see everything because of these beam height challenges … We’re looking to illuminate the part of the atmosphere that is missing”

Climavision has installed 29 radar systems across the country. They’re hoping to have another 40 up by the end of the year and 40 to 50 more next year.

Goode team has identified Bay City as a possible location to install a radar. That would make Deckerville and the rest of the Thumb less prone to undetected storms like the one that hit Saturday.

Forecasters would also be better equipped to identify a variety of weather events, including snow, heavy rainfall, high winds and tornadoes.

Meanwhile, in areas where radar gaps exist, citizen spotters are extremely helpful for forecasters.

Harriott, of Michigan Storm Chasers, said “the best way for the public to report is to follow their local (Weather Service) office on social media and tag them or comment on one of their posts with a picture that shows what they are reporting.”

The Weather Service also has a Weather Spotter Field Guide that provides more details on how to report weather events.

‘Objects can be replaced. People can’t.’

According to a Weather Service report, a warm front making its way east across the state collided on Saturday with cool air from Lake Huron and “provided just enough low level curvature in the wind field for tornadogenesis.”

The report also noted that it not uncommon for rotation to develop in that area, as Deckerville is only about eight miles from the shore of Lake Huron.

During the storm, the Weather Service issued several Special Weather Statements with “landspout possible” tags. One of those statements came in at 4:16 p.m., just two minutes before the tornado touched down.

Joel Fritsma and was tracking the storm live on the Michigan Storm Chasers YouTube channel, which provides live updates of inclement weather events across the state.

He told viewers, “The threat is there for this storm to produce tornados, but there is no tornado warning at the current time.”

Doug Confer, a lieutenant with the Deckerville Fire Department, saw the tornado firsthand. He captured a video as it destroyed a barn.

He estimates he was about a mile away, sitting in his truck. After the barn was demolished, he said, “I shut my phone off and headed that way. I was doing what anyone else in our department would do. When you see something like that, you go check to make sure everyone is all right.”

When he arrived on the scene, he saw a mess, “but everyone was OK.”

“Objects can be replaced,” he added, “people can’t.”

The Weather Service damage assessment on the Deckerville storm says at least three barns were damaged or destroyed, vehicles were picked up and dropped 15 to 20 yards away, a large camper was flipped on its side, the top of a pine tree impaled a semi truck, and the corn, beets, and other agricultural products in its path were laid flat.

During extreme weather events, especially in areas not sufficiently covered by radar, safety is the biggest priority.

Confer emphasized the importance of situational awareness.

“Everyone I talked to that was affected had that situational awareness,” he said. “If you’re standing outside in the middle of your yard and you don’t have your phone on you, none of the warnings are going to do you any good, anyways.”

This article is being republished through a syndication agreement with Bridge Michigan. Bridge Michigan is Michigan largest nonprofit news service and one of the nation leading and largest nonprofit civic news providers. Their coverage is nonpartisan, fact-based, and data-driven. Find them online at  .

by Sara Swanson

Sara Swanson is an editor, writer and a founder of the Manchester Mirror.