May 7th, 2024 is a day that will forever live in the minds of the West Michigan Weather staff team and the people of Portage, MI who were impacted by this tornado. Not only was this day a huge lesson in safety and storm chasing for us internally, but it was also a day of great success and our first true live stream that we think made a notable difference in keeping people safe in the face of life-threatening severe weather. 

Tuesday, May 7th, began as any other severe weather day would have for us here at West Michigan Weather. We had been tracking increasing severe weather chances for the last several days and the SPC had maintained a level 2/5 "Slight" risk for severe weather across much of our area. We sent out our morning forecast updates and then went to work at our day jobs. 

After getting out of work we headed south, in seperate vehicles, to target 2 seperate parts of our coverage area. This, was our first mistake, and our first lesson learned of the day. We knew that there was a chance, perhaps even a good chance, for a strong tornado that day, with multiple tornadic supercells possible. In fact, we believe that the SPC, (no hate), was underestimating the potential, and we believed that a tornado-driven level 3/5 "Enhanced" risk was warranted. Suffice it to say, we knew there was a potential for this event to get bad fast, yet we decided to go at it alone. This is no longer something we try to do when we are going to be streaming. We realized in the aftermath of this event, that chasing these higher-end setups alone, while trying to manage the stream, driving, radar, and all of the other multi-tasking that comes with storm chasing is just too much. We carefully evaluate each risk now and what additional precautions we might need to take, including, but not limited to, requirirng 2 chasers to be together, not live streaming our feed, and more. This is all to help limit potential pitfalls that could lead to a tragic situation. 

The second lesson of the day was that we need to have at least 2 radar softwares avaialble to us and at least 1 device that is soley dedicated to always displaying local radar data. This lesson came to the forefront of the chase as Jonah was sitting on the edge of the field, with perfect situational awareness, perfect radar data, and a perfect spot to watch to tornadic part of the storm pass just to his northwest... or so he thought. Suddenly, our radar software, that allows us to see realtime doppler radar data in our vehicles, freezes, closes out, and begins a large update. Upon realizing he is now without radar data, Jonah executes his escape plan... this escape plan was not easily executable however. 

In our recap video you'll observe Jonah fleeing from the tornadic supercell upon loosing situatuional awareness. However, local traffic lights hinder his progress. So much so, that several local motorists run red lights, as they also flee the tornado. In the weather community, storm chasers have been given a bad rep by a few of the bad apples who engage in reckless driving, like running red lights, while chasing to get better views. I had this in the back of my mind, so I chose to obey the law and wait for the light to cycle green, this wastes several precious minutes, and in retrospect, I should have ran the red light to protect my life. 

Shortly after going through the light, there are breaks in the trees and I spot what I identify as the wall cloud underneath the mesocyclone. I am relieved and begin to reevaluate whether my escape plan is needed. This feature I had observed, was not in fact the wall cloud, but likely a portion of the forward flank of the storm. 

This error in identifying key features of the storm led to the eventual unplanned intercept shown just a couple minutes later. 

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Aside from the lessons learned, this was also are first well-watched live stream and we are proud of the differences we made for those who were watching. 

The NWS in Northern Indiana issued the first ever Tornado Emergency for the Colon-Sherwood area as an EF-2 tornado also tore through those communities. 

Thankfully, no deaths we're reported from either of these tornadoes, however more than a dozen injuries did occur. 

Please watch or recap video, and our collaboration with Michigan Storm Chasers in the documentary-style YouTube video they produced in the aftermath of this event. Both videos are linked below.