After ensuring those who I could actually get to were OK, I awaited emergency personnel to arrive before assisting in another search of a house further back in the woods. Chase over.Īt this point I went house to house where I could on the west hand side of the damage. I made it another 6 miles, before watching about 15 trees get taken down by the tornado about a football field in front of me. From here east, most of the area to the north is wooded areas so there was nothing to really see – but I continued east, inching along watching the wind and rain and using it as my compass to where hell was consuming the earth alongside and in front of my vehicle. This was about 20 seconds before the tornado path began. I stopped and waited to gain a visual on whether I could continue or not, when I could just BARELY see a large funnel through flashes of lightning about 1/8 th of a mile to my north. Using that as my confirmation that I was not driving DIRECTLY into a tornado, I began to inch forward – carefully using the direction the rain was headed to compare my position to the bears cage.įunnel cloud east of Birch Run, MI just prior to tornado birth.Ģ miles ahead, I noticed the wind shifted as I was driving to a point where I was in the inflow. You could see rain curtains whipping around the circulation at amazing speeds through parking lot and building lights – but no power flashes and no power loss yet. Just on the other side of a hotel and heading directly for a Meijer grocery store, was a violent rotation maybe 400 feet off the ground. Driving onto the Birch Run Road overpass for I-75 and watching the wind flow around my car in combination with where it was headed on radar – I stopped to try and gain a visual on the rotation to my northeast. As I drove past the fire station, the outdoor sirens kicked on in my ear, sending a quick chill down my spine as I was directly paralleling the bears cage as it targetted the closest village east of my hometown.Īt this point, I pretty much let instinct and what I could see take over. After a quick conversation, the skies of darkness closed in while the sun set, and a dangerous situation was unfolding directly in front of me.ĭriving into the village limits of Birch Run and trying to frantically call my best friend who lives on the other side of town to tell him and his family to shelter, visibility became horrible. No warning as of yet (though I had called 911 after the wall cloud began rotating), so I called local meteorologist and friend Ahmad Bajjey. Once I crossed M-13 and was headed towards Birch Run, an extremely low wall cloud was now skimming just over treetops to my north. Charles and continuing east, the cell began to cycle numerous times pulling moisture around the updraft then briefly clearing out – each time pulling a larger wall cloud out of the rain as the storm cut its way through central Saginaw County. Charles, MIġ0 miles to the east was the home I grew up in as a teenager outside of Brant, which provided a great photo op for structure of the entire storm which you could now see rotating broadly.
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