The National Weather Service on Saturday said that its investigation of the tornado that destroyed many businesses and homes in Gaylord Friday afternoon was an “EF3” scale tornado, with “EF1” being the weakest and “EF5” being the rare super-strong ones that are seen in other parts of the country.
The “EF3” rating means that winds were estimated to be at least 140 miles per hour.
The National Weather Service labeled it as a “very rare” storm for this part of the country.
The tornado hit at just after 3:30 Friday afternoon in the busy business district along M-32, just west of the I-75 intersection. The area houses multiple “box store” retailers, small businesses, restaurants, and gas stations, and is frequented by travelers who drive between southern Michigan and the U.P.
A curfew was in effect for a second night in Gaylord Saturday night, as large areas of the city remained without power after the tornado caused some electric infrastructure to explode.
The National Weather Service estimates that the tornado had a path of some 16 miles, and was active for 20 minutes, although it was not on the ground for that entire period of time.
Otsego County officials said on Saturday that two elderly people who lived in a trailer park that was flattened were confirmed to have died. More than three dozen people were injured.
Michigan Lt. Gov. Garlin Gilchrist visited Gaylord Saturday afternoon, after Gov. Gretchen Whitmer also came to the Gaylord High School emergency center late Friday night after surveying the damage.
Gilchrist, as Whitmer had done the night before, pledged during a stop at Kirtland Community College that the state will do whatever it can to help Gaylord and Otsego County recover from the tornado.
The following is the official National Weather Service discussion of the Friday events, which you will notice is written in meteorological terms:
“Multiple thunderstorms tracked across northern Michigan during the afternoon on Friday, including a supercell thunderstorm that produced the tornado that hit the town of Gaylord along with very large hail in other parts of the area.
Setting the stage for severe weather was a trough that rotated across the upper Midwest that developed and strengthened surface low pressure west of Lake Michigan.
This system helped draw a warm, moist airmass northward across the state that helped provide the instability necessary to support severe thunderstorms later in the day. Storms initially formed along the cold front across Wisconsin during the morning hours and moved northeast across Lake Michigan, making it into the forecast area by early afternoon. The strongest line segment generated a measured wind gust of 76 mph at Frankfort Light and continued to produce damaging wind gusts across Leelanau and Antrim counties as it quickly moved northeast.
As this segment moved further away from the cold front, it began to transition into a supercell thunderstorm. This storm moved east-northeast across a very favorable environment in place across northern lower Michigan, eventually producing a tornado that caused considerable damage in the city of Gaylord. This supercell continued to trek across the area, producing baseball-sized hail in Posen.
A special weather balloon launch was conducted at 3 PM EDT to get a better look at the environment in place ahead of the approaching storm. The data from this balloon launch displayed a rare environment in place that was supportive of storms producing damaging wind gusts, very large hail, and tornadoes. Specifically, the data showed ample instability in place.
This is measured by a variable called Convective Available Potential Energy (CAPE), where values were near 2,000 Joules/kilogram. Very strong wind shear was also in place, which is a measure of the change in wind speed and direction with height in the atmosphere.
Almost 60 knots of shear was measured from the surface to 6 km above ground level. Storm-relative helicity (SRH), a variable that shows the tendency of the air being drawn into the storm to spin, had values of almost 300 meters^2/second^2. The magnitude of all of these variables are very high, supportive for supercell thunderstorm development and severe weather. Additionally, it is very rare for this magnitude of all of these variables to come together at once across northern Michigan.”
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