On Friday, May 20th, around 3:30 pm, a tornado ripped through Northern Michigan town, Gaylord. In the town of 4,200 people, the tornado ended up killing two people, and injuring 44.

     The tornado that collapsed many commercial and residential buildings, was rated an EF3 by the National Weather Service on a scale of 0-5. 

   The storm began with damaging winds that were spread throughout the midwest because of a stretch of low atmospheric pressure. It ended up turning into a supercell thunderstorm with 140 mph winds that whipped through Gaylord. 

   Although the tornado only touched ground for 20 minutes, it carved a destructive path through Gaylord. The entire town turned up on Saturday for a clean-up, and to aid the people greatly affected by this terrible storm.

   This is the first tornado in history to hit Gaylord since the records began in 1950. Gaylord does not have any tornado sirens so the people were alerted with a dangerous weather alert on their phones 10 minutes before it touched down. 

   The tornado was so catastrophic that Governor Whitmer declared a state of emergency in Otsego County. “I have declared a state of emergency for Otsego County to rush resources to the affected areas, and the State Emergency Operations Center has been activated to coordinate our state’s response…”, Whitmer stated. A state of emergency means all of the state’s resources are available to the local response teams. 

   Since then, the town of Gaylord has been on the minds of many Michiganders, hoping for a quick recovery from this absolute tragedy.