Yet another violent storm ripped through this area on Sunday afternoon – the fourth storm during the month of June that required sounding of the emergency sirens in the City of Belleville and Sumpter Township.
At about 2:30 p.m. Sunday afternoon a tornado with winds up to 105 mph damaged several roofs and destroyed two garages southeast of Willow and Clark near New Boston, but caused no deaths or injuries.
The National Weather Service said it was surveying damage in the Carleton areas of Monroe County to determine whether that, too, was a tornado.
There were reported sightings of low, rotating, ominous clouds heading east in southern Sumpter Township in the Willow Road areas near Karr, Sumpter and Haggerty.
Belleville Police Chief Gene Taylor spotted first funnel cloud he ever saw in the Willow/Clark Road area and alerted Sumpter Police to its whereabouts. A Sumpter police car followed the funnel westbound, finally abandoning the observation as it headed past I-275. Chief Taylor watched it from the north. The Sumpter officer then offered help in Huron Township.
“Good thing we have a network of sirens to warn the people,” said a television weather forecaster on Sunday afternoon, noting the people of Southeastern Michigan were warned repeatedly by the National Weather Service, TV reports, and a series of emergency sirens that went off in community after community as the storm marched its way across the state at about 40 mph.
Sumpter Township is looking into reports that when the sirens were activated, some or all failed to sound. The sirens had worked fine on three previous occasions recently.
At about 2:14 p.m. fire fighters at Van Buren Township Station #1 at Sumpter and Hull roads reported hail falling. A minute later, police reported hail at Five Points in downtown Belleville.
Shortly thereafter, North and South Middle Schools opened their doors to be available as storm shelters for the public.
By 3 p.m., the storm had finished with the Belleville area and was heading eastward.
A campground in Clyde Township, west of Port Huron, was not under a tornado watch or warning, before the storm swooped down flipping campers around and into a lake, killing a man and injuring four others.
Through Sunday, Michigan reported 5.4 inches of rain for the month, more than 2 inches above normal, according to the National Weather Service. Temperatures were about 3 degrees above average in June.
There have been more tornadoes and warnings in Metro Detroit so far this summer than the entire summer of 2009, according to weathermen.