Flooding in Holland
June 21st, 2009 at 1:00 am by Bill Steffen under Bill's Blog, Weather
Pictures from POSTED from the Holland Area on Saturday. I drove to Holland Saturday PM to see the wind and flood damage for myself. The first picture here is Ottawa Beach Road by the Anchorage Marina. There was still water going over the road at 8 PM Saturday. There were dozens of beautiful, large trees down on the north side of Lake Macatawa. Power was still out in the Waukazoo area (affecting homes and businesses). There were quite a few road washouts, including 48th street (3rd pic.) and 24th street (with Jessica Leffler from WOOD-TV doing a “stand-up” on the damage). Here’s a nice summary on the event from the GRR NWS complete with radar images, and a detailed list of rain/damage reports. There was one measured gust of 64 mph with the storms on Riley Road. I estimated that peak winds were probably 65-75 mph on the north side of Lake Macatawa. Up to 8″ of rain was reported, including 7.14″ on the 19th at Tulip City Airport. They’ve had 9.51″ for the month of June, and over 18″ of rain in the last 3 months. The Kalamazoo River is still above flood stage in Kalamazoo County Monday AM. Check out the rapid rise on the Macatawa River. If anyone knows if they keep a record of peak gusts at the Park Twp. Airport, leave a comment and let me know.
Bill When do you think it will snow this year??
ummm, who cares? id say around november.
Wow! What a horrible site to look at. Just thankfully, nobody was serious hurt or injured from the trees falling or roads being washed out. This is just one of them summer monsoon rainstorms. Hopefully, this is it for the summer, but time will tell.
One thing that really caught my eye was on a website of storm reports I acquired from the MKX twitter and when I switched to Grand Rapids, I saw three tornado reports. Bill, are these false tornado reports or are they true? Certainly a lot of damage was done in those areas, via videos, pictures and such.
http://mesonet.agron.iastate.edu/cow/maplsr.phtml?wfos=GRR&year=2009&smonth=6&sday=19&shour=19&sminute=16&emonth=6&eday=20&ehour=3&eminute=10&showsbw=on
And in response to myself, they are confirmed by the NWS tonight…two EF-2 tornadoes and one EF-1…wow and there was no tornado warnings issued.
I was just getting ready to go to bed Friday night,(had to get up early for work)heard thunder,checked out radar and knew going to bed wasn’t going to happen until after the storm was done! I love storms but have to admit this one was scary! Couldn’t believe the wind,rain and lightning!!
I live in Logan Estates at the East end of Riley. When I drove to work at 4:30am, could tell that the corner of Riley and Fairview had been under water over night. Only had to go 1 mile to work! Was lucky as when people got at work heard all kinds of stories of roads closed and still under water. Having to detour several times to get to work. Was’t surprised we were short of people because of the storm! Many still came even though they had flooded basements, and no power!
We have standing water still in the park! Was gone all day so haven’t heard of any damage around park yet.
It was a bad storm!
When I got out of Work at Wal-Mart 9:35 on Fri. The water in the parking Lot was Knee-waist deep. I had to go through the water to get to my car. Fortunately my car was on a little hill farther back which my car was not in the water. Some of my co-workers on the other hand were not so fortunate. My boss witnessed Kids were swimming in the parking lot that night.
Wow the NWS really screwed up this time. Three tornadoes and not one tornado warning or any watch.
Time to get out your street sweeping brooms.
Time to get out those brooms and start sweeping the roads. Dam dutch people and there flooded roads.
WOW, that tornado that hit Richland was 2 MILES from my house. No warning or anything, not even a severe thunderstorm warning! I was outside watching the storm come in!!! NICE WORK NWS!!!!
I agree with you Jeff, that is messed up they should have watched the storm better. It was a tornado warned system, Kenoshia Wisconsin had a tornado on the ground. I knew that they will need the spotters on the ground. It was hard to see anything in that storm. I guess there’s photo proof of 3 waterspouts on lake Macatawa but i have yet to located them.
Ross
Storm Spotter
You can not blame the NWS for not issuing Tornado Warnings, as the only problem with issuing a Tornado Warning or Warnings were two fold.
One, these tornadoes, albeit strong, were very short lived tornadoes. The shortest lasting around 2 minutes, the longest 5 (see the timestamps and information and that is there). By the time the weather service could have issued a warning, these things would have lifted and it would have been doppler indicated. This brings up a valid point that we need more trained spotters to be tracking these things, so we can get a more accurate account of what is happening on the ground in locations.
Two is the fact that apparently, the Velocity radar at NWS mustn’t have picked up little, if any, rotation in the storms. It definitely was picking up a strong Wind structure, as Severe Thunderstorm Warnings were issued in advance of these lines. Even our WOODTV meteorologists didn’t pick up on these possibilities. It’s not the fault of meteorologists or anyone, the fact is with the type of storms, a very strong instability structure in place and a warm front in the vicinity, tornadoes can and do occur without realization. It can and does happen just that fast.
Needless to say, if a Tornado Warning is not issued and there is something on the ground, I would want to be warned. And not to mention this happened in the dark and nobody could have seen it coming. And the fact is yes, there should have been warnings, but the fact of it is it was so quick that the Weather Service’s hands were tied. I think the most important aspect of the situation isn’t the tornadoes, damage or anything, the most important thing at the end of the day, no one was seriously injured or killed and that is the most important thing.
I’m sure that the NWS will have it’s reports on these three tornadoes on it’s site later today and a lot more will be known. But the fact is nobody is to blame for this, these things just happen. We can’t tell days and days out, unlike hurricanes, what or where it will happen. They just pop up with no advance notice. Just a thought.
You said: True you cannot blame NWS; however, I say: with the weather that was experienced over the lake in WI and IL, it was in my opinion that the NWS should have issued a tornado watch or AT LEAST a severe thunderstorm watch for portions of MI. Even Bill was surprised that no watch was issued and he voiced his opinion about that on Friday evening on live tv. We need to count our blessings no one perished from the the Friday evening storms. There was a lot and damage, and I feel for those who suffered. Just my thoughts.
Jerry: You make some very valid points. I’m not a arguing person, as weather is supposed to be fun for all to watch and it makes things interesting for all of us. I enjoy talking weather here and I hope that you do as well. That’s one of the reasons Bill started this blog, was for our storm reports, as well as learning about the weather. Like I said, I respect your thoughts, because they are valid.
First, I just want to explain the Storm Prediction Center, a division of the National Weather Service that deals with Severe Weather, issues all watches, Severe and Tornado. The local weather service issues warnings, not watches. I just figured I would let you know that, unless you consider the SPC the NWS, which is correct as well.
I, like you, as well was very suprised that a watch was not issued, due to all the severe weather that was happening in Iowa, Wisconsin and Illinois. Even though things were weakening and as was put in a Mesoscale Discussion that the atmosphere was more stable over here, things can flair up over land and intesify if things are right. Look what happened. And watching the around the clock coverage on WOOD TV, I think both Bill and Kyle were very surprised a watch wasn’t issued. The only real reason they didn’t issue a watch was because of the speed of the storms and the fact that they would be out of here very quick and it wouldn’t be worth a watch for an hour and done.
In my previous posts, I was just stating some possibilities as to why warnings weren’t issued, thats all. I did see, however, they didn’t say much about the tornadoes in their news update and I actually would have liked to have seen what there thoughts really were.
I, like you, am thankful for no injuries or any deaths. That would have been catastrophic and very sad, so I give credit to people for heeding the warnings, Severe Thunderstorm or Tornado. We are glad to live in this era, where we have great meteorologists, like Bill and our friends at WOOD TV and where we get plenty of warning before storms hit. It’s saving a lot of lives.
I hope to continue talking weather here and with you, Jerry. You seem to be a very knowledgable weather-nut
Hey Jerrod, thanks for the reply and clarification…much appreciated and well taken. I’m still amazed of the destruction from the 7-8″ of rain and flash flooding in Holland. From one weather-nut to another…have a great day!!
yeah but when they issue the watches and warnings and then nothing happens people complain too. it’s a no win situation.
I wonder if there is a way to remove the flood watch graphic in the corner of wood tv8’s channel? It really gets old after seeing it non-stop while watching golf.
The NWS really dropped the ball on not issuing those warnings or even a watch none the less, sure I understand they can’t control the weather, but come on people, they do this FULLTIME for a LIVING, they went to school for it, if any of the rest of us screwed up like that we’d be fired, think about it, its like a road crew ripping a road apart and not putting up any signs or warnings.
This storm wasn’t even severe, I live in Holland in the heart of it all. Hopefully next time a mile wide F5 with 180 mph winds will roar through west MI for a couple hours, that’ll get the economy going, and get people back to work.
Bill, I don’t think anyone keeps track of wx at Park Township. Also, I know where that gauge is on the Macatawa River and I think the phone line went out/power went out to the gauge as it’s sent no updates. My uncle lives on that river, and in his 20+ years living there, he has never seen it that high before. He got flooded real bad ten years ago today actually, and since then, put in a retaining wall/floodwall (pumped concrete with rebar) to hold the water away from the house and it worked very well this time.
Oh, I see a historical crest on 16.72 ft on 06/21/1997. I hope that the computer has at least some sort of battery backup or something so we can see if this crest record was broken.
I’m sure it was this high or higher this year
TF
After seeing the daytime pictures, it’s absolutely amazing to see the flooding in Holland! I wasn’t able to see the entire extent of the flooding when I was in Holland on Friday night. Just getting out of town was a chore, as the flooding was very widespread and the rain just kept coming down.
Also, Harold, 180mph winds would be EF-4. The storms firing so far north even took me by surprise, and I chase weather all over the country. The warm front moved far north within a very short period of time, and the models had no way of accounting for it until after things had fired. There was a tornado watch which does stay that persons in or near the watch area should be on the lookout for threatening weather. The watch went as far north as the southern row of counties in Michigan, so it wasn’t a stretch that the county directly north adjacent to the Tornado Watch and a county north of that had some hazardous weather. Overall it was within 30-40 miles of the watch, which is pretty insignificant.
It’s dry up here in Escanaba now. We need the rain. The yard is starting to get brown.