Tornadoes · United States · Michigan · 2024
EF2 tornado, Saint Joseph County, Michigan, August 6, 2024
This EF2 tornado ran 8.5 miles across Saint Joseph County on August 6, 2024, touching down at 8:19 AM EDT and reaching 700 yards wide. It killed nobody.
The rating scale
Tracks are drawn in the color of the rating. The Enhanced Fujita scale rates the damage rather than measuring the wind: the speeds are what that damage is taken to imply.
EF065 to 85 mph
Light damage. Surface peeled off some roofs, gutters and siding damaged, branches broken, shallow-rooted trees pushed over.
EF186 to 110 mph
Moderate damage. Roofs badly stripped, mobile homes overturned or badly damaged, exterior doors lost, windows broken.
EF2111 to 135 mphthis tornado
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.
EF3136 to 165 mph
Severe damage. Whole stories of well-built houses destroyed, large buildings badly damaged, trains overturned, trees debarked, heavy cars lifted and thrown.
EF4166 to 200 mph
Devastating damage. Well-built houses leveled, structures with weak foundations moved some distance, cars thrown and large missiles generated.
EF5over 200 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.
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.
The record
- Rating
- EF2
- Date
- August 6, 2024
- Touchdown
- 8:19 AM EDT (12:19 UTC)
- Lifted
- 8:33 AM EDT (12:33 UTC)
- On the ground
- 14 minutes
- Path length
- 8.5 miles (13.6 km)
- Path width
- 700 yards (640 m)
- Deaths
- 0
- Injuries
- 0
- County
- Saint Joseph County
- Touchdown point
- 42.033, -85.762
- Lift-off point
- 41.962, -85.635
- Record number
- 2408060619-01
The damage survey
1 damage points were recorded along this path by NWS IWX, in the Damage Assessment Toolkit the survey teams carry. The highest wind the damage implies is 75 mph.
- Approximate area of some tree damage shared on twitter from Tom Coomes 1123 am. Other damage knight road (NE of here)
Survey points are preliminary and are the raw material the published rating was built from. Source: NWS Damage Assessment Toolkit.
The air that afternoon
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.
Detroit, MI (KDTX), 12:00Z
0.3 hours before the tornado, 203 km from the path. August 6, 2024.
- Mixed-layer CAPE
- 0 J/kg
- Mixed-layer CIN
- -8334 J/kg
- Surface CAPE
- 0 J/kg
- Mixed-layer LCL
- 687 m above ground
- 0-6 km bulk shear
- 45 kt
- 0-1 km bulk shear
- 17 kt
- 0-1 km storm-relative helicity
- 191 m²/s²
- 0-3 km storm-relative helicity
- 351 m²/s²
- Significant tornado parameter
- 0.0
- Supercell composite
- 0.3
- 0-3 km lapse rate
- 3.8 K/km
The surface observations
Three Rivers (HAI), 10 km from the path, in the two hours either side.
| Time (UTC) | Temp (°F) | Dew point (°F) | Wind | Gust (kt) | Pressure (mb) | Weather |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 00:00 UTC |
From the Iowa Environmental Mesonet's archive of airport observations.
This ground now
The live radar over the trackEvery 2024 tornado in MichiganEvery tornado in Michigan since 1950Warnings in force in Michigan nowThe forecast where you are
The other tornadoes of August 6, 2024
8 more were confirmed in the United States that day.
| Date | Time | Rating | Where | Path (mi) | Width (yd) | Deaths | Injuries | Damage |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| August 6 | 2:53 AM EDT | EF1 | Berkeley, SC | 3.9 | 150 | 2 | ||
| August 6 | 3:40 PM EDT | EF1 | Lorain, OH | 11.9 | 200 | $95,000 | ||
| August 6 | 3:54 PM EDT | EF1 | Cuyahoga, OH | 1.8 | 250 | $50,000 | ||
| August 6 | 4:00 PM EDT | EF1 | Cuyahoga, OH | 16.9 | 350 | $2.0 million | ||
| August 6 | 4:09 PM EDT | EF0 | Brunswick, NC | 0.3 | 40 | $5,000 | ||
| August 6 | 4:20 PM EDT | EF1 | Summit, OH | 3.3 | 150 | $194,000 | ||
| August 6 | 4:31 PM EDT | EF1 | Lake, OH | 4.7 | 200 | $30,000 | ||
| August 6 | 5:30 PM EDT | Unrated | Mercer, PA | 0.0 | 20 | $3,000 |
What this means
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.
Sources
NOAA Storm Prediction Center tornado database, 1950-2025, the official record kept by NOAA's Storm Prediction Center.