Three people died and three were taken to a hospital after a tornado hit a southern Michigan city on Friday, authorities said.
Powerful storms swept across the state, ripping the roof off a home improvement store, blowing off parts of a storage building and toppling trees as warnings were issued across the southern part of the state.
The Branch County Sheriff’s Office said 12 injuries and three deaths were reported after a tornado appeared to hit the Union City area, which is about 125 miles (200 kilometers) west of Detroit.
In St Joseph County, Michigan, along the Indiana border, the sheriff’s office told residents to “seek shelter immediately” after confirmed reports of a tornado touching down in Union City around 4:40 p.m., a severe thunderstorm warning and possible winds of more than 60 mph (96.6 km/h).
“Citizens should anticipate power outages, road and/or neighborhood closures, and disruptions to cell service/Internet,” Michigan State Police said in a social media post.
At her home near Union City, Lisa Nicola can be heard repeatedly screaming, “Oh my God,” as she films from her back deck a fierce, spinning column of air that appears to be a tornado tearing through a section of buildings across the lake from her.
As his size grows, lifting large chunks of debris into the air, he says, “He’s lifting houses.”
“Oh, my heart is pounding,” he says in the video. “Oh, I hope they’re okay.”
The state activated its emergency operations center as officials responded to severe wind damage and reports of injuries in several southwest Michigan counties.
Powerful storms were forming across Michigan and as far north as Texas on Friday afternoon. There were no immediately confirmed reports of a tornado on the ground, but many videos posted online showed violent, spinning columns of air in Michigan.
In an eerie scene captured on video Thursday, a first responder drove directly into a storm near the western Oklahoma town of Fairview, where lightning illuminated a giant funnel that appeared to reach the ground. That storm, one of the first outbreaks of severe weather on the edge of the spring storm season, was filmed by a camera mounted on the officer’s car.
Nearby, a 47-year-old woman and her 13-year-old daughter from Fairview were found dead in a vehicle near an intersection of a highway and a county road around 10 p.m. Thursday, authorities said. The crash “appears to be tornado related,” Oklahoma Highway Patrol spokeswoman Sarah Stewart said in a statement.
“Severe weather hit Major County last night and tragically claimed the lives of a mother and her daughter,” Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt said in a statement Friday. “I am praying for the family grieving this tragic loss, as well as everyone affected by the storms.”
The National Weather Service in Norman, Oklahoma, planned to send a damage investigation team on Friday to see if Thursday night’s storms were confirmed tornadoes, meteorologist Ryan Bunker said. “At the moment, we’re still investigating that.”
More than 7 million Americans were at increased risk of severe weather on Friday in an area that includes the metropolitan areas of Kansas City, Missouri; Tulsa, Oklahoma; and Omaha, Nebraska, according to the National Storm Prediction Center. Nearly 25 million people were at slightly lower risk in an area that includes Dallas, Oklahoma City and Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
