June 12th-June 13th Flooding Event
On the evening on Thursday, June 12th, a cold front was slowly approaching
the area from the west. Showers and thunderstorms developed across Wisconsin,
and down south into Iowa and Illinois. Beginning around or just after 9 pm,
a severe thunderstorm moved onshore around and just north of Big Sable Point in
Mason county. This thunderstorm produced wind damage across northern Mason
county and into southern Manistee county.
After this thunderstorm moved through, additional rounds of showers and
thunderstorms lined up from far northwest Osceola county, back through
northern portions of Lake and Mason counties, and all the way back through
the state of Missouri. The rounds of thunderstorms continued to move over
these same areas all the way through around daybreak on Friday, June 13th.
Satellite Image from 1 am Friday June 13th (Click Image to Enlarge)
The thunderstorms that moved through brought damaging winds at times which
brought down trees, blew a roof off a gas station near Freesoil in Mason county,
and produced additional wind damage. Some of the wind damage occurred with
wind gusts of 85 to 100 mph. Some isolated reports of large hail were found,
especially near Tustin in Osceola county where quarter-sized (1.00 inch diameter)
occurred. A brief EF-0 tornado touched down in Manistee county.
Radar image from around 1 am Friday, June 13th
The biggest problem with the thunderstorms however was the extremely heavy
rainfall that occurred. Individual storms contained very heavy downpours at times,
with 1 to 2 inches per hour occurring quite often. The storms then tracked across
the same locations over and over from 9 pm Thursday evening through 7 am Friday
morning, which is called "training" of storms.
This training of storms produced rainfall amounts upwards of 11.00 inches over
local areas stretching from north of Scottville and Ludington in Mason county, to
Big Sable Point, and then out over Lake Michigan just offshore of Ludington. The
image below shows an estimation of rainfall amounts from the NWS Grand Rapids
Doppler Radar, with actual measured rainfall reports received by trained spotters,
general public, media, law enforcement, emergency managers, and automated
observation sites plotted on top of the image.
Radar storm total rainfall estimates (Click image to enlarge)
The 11 inches of rain in just less than 12 hours is an extraordinary amount
of rain in a short time. To put this in perspective, the average amount of
rainfall in a year for the Ludington area is right around 33 inches. So roughly
a third of the annual average amount of rainfall fell in less than 12 hours. Also,
the 100 year occurrence of rainfall in a 12 hour period for the Ludington area
is around 5 to 6 inches. This shows just how extraordinary this amount of
rainfall in a short period of time is.
Below are a few photos from Mason county, showing some of the flooding
that occurred as a result of the heavy rain, and a couple of the washouts
of local roads.
Fountain Road just west of
Stiles Road
The South Branch of the
Lincoln River across Stiles Road
Big Sable River washing out
a guardrail and a portion of
Townline road
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