Yonkers, tornado purportedly touched down in Lake Orion

[gasperc]

Only a couple miles from me. Looks like tornado's have touched down all over the place tonite(8/24). This was one wicked storm. No damage here. Hope everyone is well. Share your stories folks.

[shaniqua6392]

1. Pretty good here in Livonia.

It did get kind of scary though. I guess they were not so lucky in Livingston County and Fenton. I am getting ready to watch the news here at 11 p.m. to get some updates. A few people lost their homes and there was widespread damage from what I can gather. So sad. I guess a donation to the Salvation Army would be in order tomorrow. I will see if they are out there helping. Hope you are doing well. My sister and her girlfriend live in Oxford and it got pretty scary there too.

[TahitiNut]

2. One reported dead; 305,000 without power; three to five tornadoes may have hit

Mich. storms spawn tornado, delay Yankees-Tigers game
8/24/2007, 10:56 p.m. EDT
The Associated Press

(AP) — At least one tornado swept across three southeast Michigan counties Friday, destroying several homes and barns and heavily damaging parts of Fenton, including the city offices.

The National Weather Service confirmed at least one tornado touched down and said from three to five tornados may have hit the area. Meteorologists were trying to verify if tornadoes touched down in parts of Oakland County, southwest Lapeer County, Shiawassee County and in northeast Washtenaw County.

The one confirmed tornado was centered over Fenton when it hit, weather service meteorologist Danny Costello said.

Most of the city of about 10,000 people was without power, with the south side sustaining the heaviest damage, Fenton Mayor Sue Osborn said during a news conference Friday night.

Minor injuries were reported, primarily from traffic accidents during the storm.

Roofs were torn off homes; businesses, a community center and city offices suffered major damage; and the walls were partially blown out at a tractor supply store. The city instituted a curfew beginning at 8:30 p.m. Friday and continuing until further notice for residents and nonresidents, the mayor said.

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In all, lower Michigan has been hit hard this month, with rain at Detroit Metropolitan Airport totaling 5.28 inches.

[SharonRB]

3. I was in Royal Oak, grabbing a bite to eat before our event at

Barnes & Noble. I got a call from Nancy Skinner, who was to be one of our panelists, at 6:15. She was ready to walk out the door, but when she saw there were tornado warnings, she said she was sitting tight until it blew over. It hadn't gotten to Royal Oak yet. I went over to the bookstore at about 6:30 and shortly thereafter it got dark and the wind picked up and it started storming. A bunch of people who were there for our event were all upstairs on the second floor of the bookstore right in front of the big windows. Some stayed there, but I and others went downstairs in a back corner of the store to wait it out.

It finally started letting up a bit at about 7, which is when our event was to begin. We held off and started late to give people time to get there. We started at 7:15 with two of our panelists and Nancy got there about 7:45, just in time for her turn to speak.

After all that, the event went extremely well. We had over 100 people show up and had a very lively discussion of Al Gore's book, "The Assault on Reason," which led to discussion about a number of issues ranging from impeachment to Iran. We even had some infiltrators from Joe Knollenberg's camp show up and try to start trouble.