U.P. and Severe Weather

Last week, certain areas of the Upper Peninsula experienced severe weather - with even a couple of confirmed reports of tornadoes near the community of Norway. The tornadoes were weak, nonetheless, some damage occurred in the form of trees being blown down and power lines knocked over. I was rather perplexed at the lack of warnings presented by the local media when the tornado warnings went out. Usually something as severe as tornadoes would get local cut-ins with a meteorologist updating the public the situation that exists. I mean, yes, the main local station that has a meteorologist alerted the public of the tornado warnings with crawls across the screen. But the station never cut into programming at the time. What if the atmospheric conditions were just right and a devastating tornado outbreak occurred in the peninsula? Nobody would've received the proper warning.

In general, tornadoes happening in the U.P. is a pretty rare event. The area as a whole probably averages one to two tornadoes every few years. And in most cases like the event that occurred last week, the tornadoes that do spin up are rather weak. There was a case 15-20 years ago where a tornado hit the Gladstone community, doing minor damage. More often than not, when tornadoes do form in the U.P., they affect southern portions of the peninsula. However, funnels have been reported in northern counties as well as waterspouts forming near the Lake Superior shoreline during the right conditions. So all in all, yes, tornadoes do occur from time to time in the U.P. However, they are very rare and isolated, and we never experience extreme damage like the Southern Plains where tornadoes are more frequent.

Still, the lack of severe weather coverage for the Upper Peninsula is a bit concerning. The National Weather Service out of Negaunee Township does an excellent job forecasting and tracking the worst of the U.P.'s weather. If one has a NOAA weather radio and are able to pick up a frequency, it's the main weather source for for the U.P. It's the local TV stations that seem to be the most lax. The local ABC station doesn't even have its own in-house meteorologists. They depend on Accuweather to forecast Upper Michigan weather, and that means a local presence is missing to the forecasts. The "local" CBS station is out of Green Bay. They have a comprehensive U.P. forecast for each of its newscasts, yet once again, the local presence is missing. During the severe weather event of last week, they didn't cut into local programming when the tornado warnings went out. Usually they are quite good at updating the public of any major severe weather that's occurring - but this time they didn't. As for the local NBC station, they provided warning crawls from the National Weather Service and the broadcast of the warnings from NOAA radio, but no local cut-ins. They have a local presence in their forecasting and usually do a decent job with the weather. Yet, their severe weather coverage is much to be desired.

I was listening to a local radio station out of the Escanaba area the next morning when the on-air talent commented about the severe weather event. One mentioned how they just slept through it while the other didn't think nothing of it - despite the fact that it was a tornado warning. What will it take before such a warning is taken more seriously up here? Hopefully not when the perfect conditions exist where a major tornado outbreak takes place and devastates an area. But sadly, that's what usually happens in cases like this. The local media stations need to step up to the plate and provide better TV/radio coverage of these warnings as they happen, and to provide updates to the public during the warnings and once the warnings expire. I also believe that many of the communities up here do not have tornado sirens. So if a tornado was actually spotted, how would people really know if a tornado was on the ground, especially if they weren't by a TV or radio? It would be too late before they got the warning. Like I mentioned, tornadoes are rare up here, yet not totally uncommon. I think we need to start better preparing ourselves for such an event to occur because you just never know when it might happen.