F1 tornado, Tipton, Michigan, March 28, 1998

1. F040 to 72 mph

   Light damage. Surface peeled off some roofs, gutters and siding damaged, branches broken, shallow-rooted trees pushed over.

2. F173 to 112 mphthis tornado

   Moderate damage. Roofs badly stripped, mobile homes overturned or badly damaged, exterior doors lost, windows broken.

3. F2113 to 157 mph

   Considerable damage. Roofs torn off well-built houses, frame homes shifted on their foundations, mobile homes destroyed, large trees snapped or uprooted, cars lifted off the ground.

4. F3158 to 206 mph

   Severe damage. Whole stories of well-built houses destroyed, large buildings badly damaged, trains overturned, trees debarked, heavy cars lifted and thrown.

5. F4207 to 260 mph

   Devastating damage. Well-built houses leveled, structures with weak foundations moved some distance, cars thrown and large missiles generated.

6. F5261 to 318 mph

   Incredible damage. Strong frame houses swept off their foundations, car-sized missiles thrown more than 100 meters, steel-reinforced concrete badly damaged, high-rise buildings deformed.

7. Unrated

   The survey recorded a tornado but could not put a number on it, most often because it crossed open country and damaged nothing a rating can be read from.

Rating

F1

Date

March 28, 1998

Touchdown

10:58 AM EST (15:58 UTC)

Path length

0.5 miles (0.8 km)

Path width

30 yards (27 m)

Deaths

0

Injuries

0

Property damage

$30,000

County

Lenawee County

Touchdown point

42.030, -84.100

Lift-off point

42.030, -84.100

Record number

57

A line of fast-moving showers with embedded thunderstorms raced across far southeast Michigan during the late morning and early afternoon hours. A brief tornado occurred in northern Lenawee County, destroying a farmhouse and a barn, damaging another barn, and moving two grain silos off of their foundations. The same storm blew down trees in Manchester, and then produced patches of wind damage from just west of Ann Arbor to just north of Ypsilanti. In Ypsilanti Township, a house was deroofed, other roofs were damaged, and many trees were downed, some onto vehicles. A radio tower was damaged in Superior Township, and aluminum roofing was torn from a home.Additional damage occurred in Wayne County. A furniture warehouse in Livonia was heavily damaged. In adjacent Redford, spotter estimated winds of 85 mph took the roof off of a business and threw parts of it through the window of a business across the street. Substantial tree damage also took place. Another pocket of damage occurred just west of downtown Detroit, near the foot of the Ambassador Bridge. A wall was knocked out at a taxi cab garage, with cinderblocks damaging five cabs. A billboard in the area was damaged. An empty tractor-trailer attempting to cross the Ambassador Bridge into Canada was knocked over very near the international border.Numerous trees and power lines were downed in eastern Macomb County, from Harrison Township south to Eastpointe. The most concentrated damage was in Roseville. A few trees were also downed in Utica.

From NOAA NCEI's Storm Events Database, the narrative the local forecast office wrote for Storm Data.

No tornado warning for this county appears in the archive as in force at the moment the tornado touched down.

Every warning and watch covering the touchdown point that day, from the Iowa Environmental Mesonet's archive of National Weather Service products. Lead time is measured from the issue of the warning in force to the touchdown time in the database, both of which were recorded to the minute by different people.

The Storm Prediction Center had this point in a General Thunderstorms Risk. The outlook in force was issued at 10:58 UTC.

SPC's Day 1 convective outlook as it stood when the tornado began, read at the touchdown point. The same archive is on the radar archive.

The radiosonde launches on either side of the tornado, from the nearest station that was launching then, drawn and analyzed the way Storm Lab does: the same diagram, the same parcel and shear definitions SPC's mesoanalysis uses.

The Detroit radar (KDTX), 91 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 15:59 UTC.

Open the radar archive at this moment, over the track

Reflectivity and velocity, decoded from the Level II archive in the browser. Volumes take a few seconds to open the first time.

The live radar over the trackEvery 1998 tornado in MichiganEvery tornado in Michigan since 1950Warnings in force in Michigan nowThe forecast where you are

5 more were confirmed in the United States that day.

Ratings are the survey's, read off the damage rather than measured; the rating scale is above. Tornado counts rise through the record as reporting improved, so a year in the 1950s is not comparable with one today except for the strongest tornadoes, which were always noticed.

NOAA Storm Prediction Center tornado database, 1950-2025, the official record kept by NOAA's Storm Prediction Center.