May 31, 1998 derecho
May 30th, 2009 at 11:59 pm by Bill Steffen under Bill's Blog, Weather
Today is the anniversary of the famous “derecho” thunderstorm outbreak of 1998. Around 5 AM that Sunday morning, the storms blasted through West Michigan with winds as high as 130 mph in Grand Haven and Walker. According to the Storm Prediction Center, this episode ranks as one of the top thunderstorm events in World history. A large area of significant wind damage occurred from South Dakota all the way to the East Coast. In Michigan there were four fatalities and 153 people were injured. Not a single stoplight was working between Grand Rapids and Baldwin. The toll would have been much worse if the storms would have come through in the afternoon instead of in the early morning when most people were in houses. I went out to visit Spencer, S.D. where the worst tornado occurred as the supercells first formed. The cells formed the line that eventually raced from eastern S.D. to Massachusetts. Eleven years later you can still identify swaths where most of the trees were blown over. Read more here, here, and here.
Bill when do you think another bow eco will come though grand rapids??
I had just moved into my first apartment. I slept through this whole thing, had no clue it was coming (I did not own a TV and really wasnt paying much attention to the radio). I woke up the next day and was shocked. I remember walking outside and my jaw dropping. Thankfully it was a basement apartment.
I lived near Plainfield and 5 Mile. Later that day we drove to Spring Lake and Grand Haven. Lots more jaw-dropping moments.
the storm ripped thru the holland area , woke me up and scared the heck out of me but passed off to the east. i could see it storming over by grand rap but i didnt think anything more about it. got up and went to work. about an hour later i got a phone call saying my moms house got wrecked by a “tornado” but not to worry she only had a mild heart attack! but what about my sister and her family in the apartment next door?
turned out everyone was okay but their duplex and a couple of other houses in that neighborhood were totaled by “straight line winds”. afterwards we found things like unbroken china(even tho the roof had been ripped off) and dirt and insulation everywhere even inside closed drawers.
later john engler stood in the front yard and gave a speech about how the government would take care of everything.
This remains one of the most impressive radar images I have ever seen. I lived in Toledo at the time, but was on the phone with my mom near Greenville because they didn’t have cable and no idea the immensity of the storm that was approaching their house.
I remember this day, I was next to Lake Michigan, in the early morning
hours, could not see much, since it was dark. Recorded a 92 mph wind
gust, then my anemometer blew off the roof of my truck. The winds
gusted much more after that. Still will never know, how high the winds
got at my location.
Just to the north of my location at Grand Haven, Spring Lake area
the NWS estimated wind gusts to 130 mph.
Also, I had a pop-up camper destroyed from the derecho.
Mike
Cousin Mike,
Was on woodtv’s website this morning and saw your post about the windstorm. How are you and your father? Are you living near Grand Rapids? My wife and I built a house on my dads land next to the old house John lives in so we are neighbors. We still have our old house for sale and are having a hard time selling it in this economy. If you get this message let me know how your family is doing.
Cousin Paul
Hi Cousin Paul
My dad and I live in Lansing, Michigan.
We want to move back to the Grand Rapids area,
I would need to find a job in the GRR area to do this.
Are you on Facebook, Yes or No.
Cousin Mike
Here’s a Muskegon Chronicle article from last year.
I remember that storm. I lived in Rockford at the time, in a second floor apartment in the Lake Bella Vista area. I woke up to the winds and thought a tornado was coming through. I grabbed my two girls (aged 9 and 6 at the time) and we all got in the tub with lots of pillows piled on top of us. We stayed there for about 20 minutes and then the wind died down.
There was a huge tree in the yard that was on its side and the roots were completly out of the ground. If I recall correctly, it was either the October before that or the October after that that there was a heavy, wet snowstorm early in the month that brought down a large amount of trees in the Rockford area. The pictures of town were amazing with roads blocked off everywhere with trees and limbs down on the ground.
We were camping that weekend just east of Ludington. Campground staff came around just before 5am, pounding on doors and getting everyone into the main building. When they pounded on our door, they told us we had about 15 minutes before the storm would hit. Unfortunately it hit about 5 minutes later and we were stuck inside our RV. I’ve never been more scared in all my live-long days! Afterwards…lots of trees down in the campground (blocking the roads) and no power. It took several hours & many chain saws to clear the way so everyone could leave. Driving home, we saw so much damage — we were very nervous about what we’d find back home! We did lose a maple tree in our front yard, but no other damage. We were counting our MANY blessings that day!!
Remember it very well. I remember my wife and I grabing our small kids and heading for the basement. Only time I can every remember going to the basement because of a storm. I use to love thunderstorms. But since this episode, everytime I see a line coming across Lake Michigan, I think of those storms. Wasn’t it two days later and it happened again? Never heard the wind howl like that. Thought my house was going to come off it’s foundation. From my house you can walk to Lake Michgan and still see swaths of trees down from that storm.
In your area, it was two days before the May 31 derecho that Muskegon had another very damaging thunderstorm.
I remember that morning very well. My husband was up and woke me up to tell me to get the kids ready to go to the basement. This was unusual because he is not usually worried by storms. The wind just howled and the damage was the worst I had seen in such a widespread area in my life. I was a child when the tornado of 65 hit Rockford where I lived at the time and while that damage was more condensed in a smaller area and worse in damage to buildings the 1998 damage was very large scale and did so much tree damage. My girls still talk about that storm and I am sure they will remember it their whole lives.
My favorite huge tree fell onto our house that day. I remember driving on 4 mile road west of Alpine and it looked like someone rolled a huge bowling ball down the road. incredible!!
I have all the newspapers saved from that storm from the Muskegon Chronicle. I’ll never forget that week.
My family and I were greatly affected by this storm. We lived out in the Cutlerville area at the time and the whole town was without power from Sunday morning until Tuesday. Trees and power lines were down everywhere, many homes had roofs blown off. You could just see where the winds whipped down along 68th st between Burlingame and Clyde Park. The fields were all flat, trees blown over, some looked like they had been spun counterclockwise and up rooted, we wondered if a tornado had done the damage at first. You couldn’t find a store with ice on hand to sell anywhere on the south side of the county. This was the worst storm I have ever affected by. I lived on the northwest side of town growing up but the 2 tornados that hit there in 1956 and 1965 didn’t come close to where my parents and I lived. Thanks for remembering this storm Bill!!
I remember this storm vividly! All those large mature trees by Spectrum Health South Pavilion were just ripped right out of the ground!!! Was even a nightmare trying to get to the gas station just to get coffee! Stayed home the rest of that day!!! I thought for sure it was a tornado coming!
I’d like to see a lightning map of that storm comming in. That was some insane lightning watching it come in from the old DeVos Hall/Grand Center. We were out on the back balcony having a smoke break, and the lightning seemed to part pretty good to the north and south before it roared into town.
The condo that got demolished in Spring Lake was owned by a co-worker of mine. He had JUST moved to West Michigan to begin work at Herman Miller. Hadn’t moved his family yet. He didn’t know anyone in the area so he called his new boss, who helped him out. Also had a friend in Walker lose part of her roof. The trees that were uprooted in Riverside Park were unreal. It looked like a disaster zone.
One of the best highlights I have in my life is the 1998 Derecho. So glad I could be a part of it. Now that was a REAL storm.
Yeah I remember it too, its time for another event like that, storms like that really get the economy going and get people working. However, with all this “global warming” causing temperatures to be about 20 degrees colder than they should be, we will never experience another storm like that. Michigan is such a weak state, the amounts of snow we get is weak compared to the mountains in Colorado and Utah, the thunderstorms are weak compared to the tornadic activity that occurs in the heartland, and hurricanes down south. The weather is so in between, even in the heart of winter all we get is freeze/thaw action, no wonder the roads are so bad. Michigan is just a mediocre weakling with a poor economy, the highest unemployment in the nation, the second highest gas prices in the nation next to Hawaii, and some of the worst roads anywhere rated at a “D” by the government. I am so glad to have left and gone to Miami where it is always sunny and the roads are excellent and the vehicles are rust free, and there is no snowplow damage and killing frost.
We’re glad you left too!
Now that GM is going bankrupt even more will be leaving the state, I have a friend who works for U-Haul and he said 80-100 families are leaving the state every week. I think the federal government should just buy MI and make it a landfill or nuclear waste site.
I remember this storm quite well. I had always been interested in weather. I remember being woke up at 4am to a tornado watch being issued. The text of the watch was
“THUNDERSTORM WIND GUSTS TO 105 MPH”
I don’t think I’ve seen mention of winds that high in a watch text but maybe once or twice since.
To put it in perspective, the Southern Great Lakes Derecho of 1998 brought Category 3 Hurricane winds to Michigan!
One thing I will remember out of all of it, how hot and humid it got around midnight.
Bill when do you think our first severe will hit??
We were tent camping at Sleeping Bear Dunes with a church group and while the storm was strong there, we were shocked while driving back to GR on US-31 that morning and saw all kinds of damage, barns and trees knocked down. We tried to get cash out of an ATM in Manistee, but it didn’t work. We had to dodge trees lying across the highway as we drove back! Our house in southeast GR was OK when we arrived home.
It looks like it got worse once it got east of 131, like most thunderstorms. I could do without ever seeing anything like that. I’ll take the “garden variety” thunderstorms anyday over any severe weather.
[...] Wood-TV8 (take time to watch the video on this page … it is a report about the Derecho event by our favorite Meteorologist, Bill Steffen. He reports some historical information from this event that is incredible). [...]
We were woke up by what sounded like a train roaring through our living room. We had no idea what was happening, but it sounded like a tornado. We rounded up the children and were heading to the basement when we heard a really loud crack and our huge 3 story pine tree in the front yard went down.
I loved that tree! That was a very scary 10 minutes or so.
This remains one of the most intense storms I have ever experienced living in michigan. I was living in South Eastern Ionia County, and woke up early in the morning for some reason. (6th sense maybe???) Looked out my window and it was still a little dark out, but i could see some lightning, so I went outside to take a peak at what was coming, and good lord. I just remember it was extremely warm and muggy for that time of morning and knew somethin was up. I then checked the tv and saw the radar and flipped! it wasn’t 10 minutes later that it punched through, knocking over trees in the neighbors yard, and ripping a few shingles off the roof. Later that morning, we checked some damage and discovered one of our neighbor’s 50 foot pine tree was completely turned upside down and was resting on the side of his house!
I lived on 5 mile and the beltline. I graduated high school in 98. That day was the day of my graduation party. We had to run several generators especially because the Red Wings were in the Finals…
I remember that morning well. I woke up to the sound of the wind howling and debris hitting my house in Cutlerville. It was pitch dark and I thought by the sounds of it, it was a tornado. Not knowing how strong this was going to be, I knew I had to get my four kids to the basement. I felt like I was already out of time. I could hear the four corners of my house creaking, and I really thought the roof was going to come off the house. My heart was pounding as I got up to grab them as fast as i could to get them downstairs before it was too late. I remember having this bad feeling like we were going to get sucked out of the house along with the roof. The big tree in our front yard came down and pulled the power line out of our house. But the ground wire was still attached and the line going into the power box in the basement where we were was humming really loud and was glowing a bright orange. It started to burn around the wood of the floor above it and I thought it was going to start a fire in my house. But then something snapped and it finally quit. Even though my neighborhood was without power for a couple of days we were out for longer because of the power line that was pulled out.
I remember that morning well, I was waiting for it to hit and fell asleep, and was awaken by the beep, beep, beep on The Weather Channel. I attempted to go outside but the door wouldn’t open because of the winds. The house shook and my patio furniture wound up in my neighbors yard. After it hit my mother and I drove to Meijers on Alpine. Tree’s and power lines were down all over the place. Meijers was running on back-up power and if you didn’t have cash you were screwed. A lot of people could not get their batteries and ice. I’ve been in at least 4 hurricanes and the winds that hit West Michigan that day were stronger then at least 3 of them that I was in.
Wow Bill U really have stirred up some memories…….thats what is so cool about your blogg……its like a journal of sorts for those of us lucky enough to read it…..what I remember about that event is the loss of all those awesome trees at the Veteran’s place on Monroe……..remember all the fuss about who would get that wood? it was worth big $……maybe thats what that fool from Miami was talkin about the economy and all.
That was an amazing storm that came through…My mother and I want down Giles road and when we reached the Scenic Dr. intersection the rain all of the sudden stopped, and when we turned the corner about 100′ the rain started again! Guess what we went under a funnel cloud, when we got home we heard storm reports of a funnel cloud at that specific intersection! That funnel cloud came down so low that it killed the tops of some of the tree line!
Bill…Do you remember this specific storm report?
I might as well tell my story. We (parents, sister, me) lived on Mt. Garfield Road in Fruitport near Johnson Road. We just moved our double wide cedar sided house from Spring Lake. We had bought an acre, so we had to remove the trees and weeds from where we wanted the trailer and the huge garage we were going to build.
The township wanted us to pour extra cement down, and anchor in it deeper. Cost extra money! At the time we thought that was odd and uncalled for but we did it cause we had to. So all that was done.
Now on to the storms. I remember three days before the derecho we had a real good storm come into Muskegon Northward, we ended up getting I would say 80 mph winds from that, knocked our power out for a day or so. We had just got our power turned back on and Bill came on then news warning of severe weather later that night. This time thinking ahead I bottled up some water and got the scanner out to listen to the weather band.
Well I remember at the 11pm news Bill said it was coming, and so I started getting stuff ready, I put a couple chairs in the kitchen, and a blanket around it just in case. I went outside after the news and it was downright hot and humid, which seamed odd. They then issued a tornado watch, then a bit later while the storms were just about halfway across the lake they issued warnings already. I told my dad I had never seen that in my life. I had the police and fire scanner going when the storms hit the shore, and call after call started coming in. Then all of the sudden, DARK! The power went off, and there was no wind no thunder nothing.
At just that time my sister was coming home. Then chaos. The wind was so much stronger than the first storm three days earlier. Had to be over 100 mph. I was in the kitchen trying to persuade my family to come into the shelter I had built. My dad and sister watched out the front window, I asked why and they said to see where we were going. The house shook, and the wind was so loud, I thought it was a tornado. You could see the trees sticking straight out in the wind just about parallel to the ground! So much lighting and not much thunder, but the wind was so loud so I doubt we could hear thunder anyways.
The wind lasted quite a while, then it was over. I went to the garage at daylight and got the car ready. My neighbor had a tree on their house so we checked to make sure they were alright. We then drove into Fruitport down East Farr Rd, and you could see a path of trees down straight to our house. We drove into Fruitport and the damage was extensive, as we got closer to my friends house in Spring Lake, there were trees and power lines down in the road, so it was like driving down a two track.
My friend said he slept through the whole thing. Their neighbor worked for the state police and talked about all the damage reported everywhere. We drove into Grand Haven and downtown Spring Lake and couldn’t believe all the trees down and the trees down in the cometary. My sisters trailer in Country Estates was destroyed by a tree, she claims to have seen a tornado coming at her. Then we went out to Ravenna (Moorland Township) where I used to live to check out the huge transmission towers that toppled. We lived next to the same transmission towers a mile or so away at one time, and figured it would take a tornado to knock them down and would give us like a warning as to when a tornado was nearby.
I have seen some huge windstorms when I was younger make those lines swing, if it was windy I would hunt the other side of the property.
All in all we had no power for a week or so. I’ll never forget that night.
Sisres friends trailer excuse me.
This was probably a once in a lifetime storm for this area. All conditions were perfect for this to happen.
I remember hearing the wind picking up in our big maple trees and then….Wham!!!! the straight line winds hit the house with a roar….windows rattled, pitures on the wall fell… the roar drowned out the falling pitures, nshingles ripping off the roof and the trees snapping off out side our windows…we lost the tops of 4 trees one was about 18″ in diameter…across the street the entire row of old maples were down except the few in my yard….I’m not a morning person but that woke me up!!!!
My wife and I had the unfortunte experience of being in our car on I-96 just west of Flint when it happened. We were in Lake Orion at my brother’s (north of Detroit in Oakland County). It’s amazing how many details I recall 11 years later. I was 27…which means I was young and stupid. I remember being upset at how hot it was for late May in the middle of the night. My brother wouldn’t turn the air on and the winds were picking up and woke me up about 5:30am or so. At that time in Lake Orion they were just heavy winds and it kept banging the blinds into the window frame…but I didn’t think it was anything extraordinary. Because I was hot and couldn’t sleep anymore because of the noise, in disgust, I left my brother a note and Jennifer and I headed north on I-75. It was dark when we left…but as dawn broke I recall seeing the tops of the clouds in the distance with a smattering of lightning…I had never seen them that high. But why should I be concerned, I thought? Up to that point, in my whole life I had driven through rain storms before. As we got into the Flint area I remember seeing police cars sitting on the tops of the highway overpasses….my wife and I said how strange that was…had never seen it. In hindsight we realized they weren’t letting cars on the highway. We were so foolish we had no idea what we were heading into. As we merged onto I-96 west of Flint to head back to GR the rain and wind picked up in great intesity. The man on the radio said if you are in Genessee county and in a car to get into a ditch immediately. The tornado siren was blaring on the radio. I remember my wife asking frantically: “Where are WE!?”. I told here I didn’t know…that I only knew the counties around West Michigan. I told her I thought Gennessee county was farther north…I was fumbling with a map looking for “Gennesse County” but we were right smack in the middle of it. At this point we literally couldn’t see 2 inches in front of our windshield. The dawn sky had darkened to black and the leaves…and the branches…the branches were everywhere flying all over the car. I recall thinking there wouldn’t be any branches left on the trees. The radio was still blaring but we no longer could listen to it as my wife was frantically crying and I was trying to mask the sheer terror that seized me. We kept inching along the highway and my only goal was to get under a freeway overpass – just so I could see something. The fear of not being able to see was overpowering. The shame I felt for putting my 26 year old wife in harm’s way was palpable too. We thought we were on or near the fringes of a tornado. We didn’t know what wsa going to happen to us. We finally got to an overpass and could finally see a little. I’ll never forgot how the trees in front of us were bending over almost parallel to the ground. The branches were still flying all over the windshield but with less rain we could use the wipers to see while under the overpass. I remember thinking we’d be safe there until it passed but then the wind began to pick up….I still recall thinking to myself, “this isn’t possible-my car’s too heavy to be moving like this!”. Inexplicably my knees began to shake uncontrollably…never happened before or sense…but I can tell you it’s the strangest feeling to have your knees literally knocking like a cartoon character. The car was heaving side to side like a group of men were see-sawing us. I was in a Nissan Maxima at the time – which was a fairly good sized 4 door sedan. Of course, my wife was literally freaking out…just when we had decided to run up into the crease of the overpass (because we thought the car was going to get flipped) the wind started to die down. Fear finally began to ebb from my mind…I noticed another car behind me at the point. I’m sure they were going through the same thing. When the wind stopped it looked like a surreal picture. I-96 was literally covered entirely with tree limbs, trees, and branches. We drove through an obstacle course from Flint to Portland weaving all over the road at about 15 miles an hour to get back home and to avoid tree branches or drive over the smaller ones. At the Portland rest area we saw a car that was completely squashed by a large tree. The owner had fortunately sought safety inside. I remember reading later that going under an overpass may not be the best place because of the vortex action of winds…but there was so much fear at the time it seemed like the best to do. To this day I tease my brother who now lives in California that if he would have just turned the air conditioner on that night we would have likely slept through it…but then I wouldn’t have this story indelibly etched into my mind with precise detail 11 years later…and probably as long as I live. My wife and I know have two little boys and when this “anniversary” comes up they like to hear our story.
meant to say I-69 west of Flint…
I remember this storm by the exact date and year and hour it took place. Being a huge 12 year old meterologist fan at the time I stayed up watching TV since I was to scared/excited to sleep. I remember telling my parents I would wake them up in the storm got bad, since they believed Lake Michigan would weaken the storm. However, the power of this storm was incrediable. I was able to watch chairs flying off our deck and thinking where’s the candle and everyone get in the basement! I will never forget this storm since it truely showed God’s power! Great Job Woodtv 8 for your continous excellent coverage that has entertained me for 23 years!
I was up in the U.P. of Michigan that weekend. On our way back home, we couldn’t believe the damage we saw.
I remember that storm VERY WELL!! I was living in Comstock Park…just a few miles away from the VERY HARD HIT Alpine/4-3 mile area. I heard the winds and thought for sure it was a tornado coming. I could see all of the powers flashes from my house on Alpine. The damage wasn’t bad where I was living at the time. I was SHOCKED when I saw Bell Tire and Keller Ford. Not to forget about the sub-division behind the old K-Mart and Chuck E Cheese. It was indeed a REAL STORM!!!