EF1 tornado, Dowagiac Cass Arpt to Nicholsville, Michigan, May 7, 2024

1. EF065 to 85 mph

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

2. EF186 to 110 mphthis tornado

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

3. EF2111 to 135 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. 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.

5. EF4166 to 200 mph

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

6. 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.

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

EF1

Date

May 7, 2024

Touchdown

5:11 PM EDT (21:11 UTC)

Lifted

5:38 PM EDT (21:38 UTC)

On the ground

27 minutes

Path length

11.7 miles (18.8 km)

Path width

950 yards (869 m)

Deaths

0

Injuries

0

County

Cass County

Touchdown point

41.995, -86.123

Lift-off point

42.068, -85.917

Record number

2405071511-01

54 damage points were recorded along this path by NWS GRR and NWS IWX, in the Damage Assessment Toolkit the survey teams carry. The strongest indicator was rated EF1. The highest wind the damage implies is 105 mph.

• Tree snapped off about 30 feet up
• Trees snapped and one uprooted onto home 28600 block of Middle Crossing Rd. Splatter onto siding. Garage door blown in and a few roof shingles blown off.
• Two trees uprooted and fallen in two different directions. One fell southwest, the other northeast.
• Roof tarred. No visible debris.

Survey points are preliminary and are the raw material the published rating was built from. Source: NWS Damage Assessment Toolkit.

Thunderstorms produced severe tornadoes, large hail, and damaging wind gusts on the afternoon and evening of May 7. The largest hail stone reported was 4 inches in diameter.

An EF-1 tornado with maximum wind speeds of 95 mph occurred in the early evening of May 7th in Cass county, MI. The tornado touched down in a field just north of the Dowagiac Municipal Airport. The tornado did damage to trees along Middle Crossing Rd, even uprooting a few large trees onto homes in the area. The tornado continued northeast, where a power pole was snapped and a few center pivots were flipped in a field adjacent to the Amtrak railroad near the intersection of Gage Street and Atwood Road. The tornado reached its maximum width in the Twin Lakes area, where extensive damage to trees was noted on all sides of both lakes. Hundreds of trees of varying sizes were snapped and uprooted in Twin Lakes. The tornado continued northeast, snapping trees on Dewey Lake Street. Additional damage to a barn was noted on Wickett Road. The tornado dissipated near the Cass/Van Buren county line.

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

12 minutes of warning. NWS IWX issued a tornado warning for this county at 20:59 UTC, 12 minutes before the tornado touched down, in force until 21:45 UTC.

The county was under a tornado watch, issued at 18:29 UTC and running to 00:48 UTC.

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 Slight Risk, with a 0.05 chance of a tornado within 25 miles. The outlook in force was issued at 19:45 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 Northern Indiana radar (KIWX), 79 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 21:13 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.

Local storm reports within 60 km of the path, in the three hours either side.

From the Iowa Environmental Mesonet's archive of National Weather Service local storm reports.

The live radar over the trackEvery 2024 tornado in MichiganEvery tornado in Michigan since 1950Warnings in force in Michigan nowThe forecast where you are

52 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.