Abstract
During the 35-year period from 1950 through 1984, 520 tornadoes were reported and confirmed in Michigan. Slightly less than one quarter of them killed a total of 234 people, injured 3,102, and caused hundreds of millions of dollars in property damage.' A violent tornado in Genesee County on June 8,1953, widely referred to since then as "The Flint Tornado," was responsible for 116 deaths, the greatest number of deaths by a single tornado in the entire United States that year. The worst in Michigan's history, the Flint Tornado death toll ranks fourth largest in the nation, by single tornadoes, for the 69 years from 1916 through 1984.2 It was exceeded only by the record-length Tri-State Tornado which devastated Missouri, Illinois, and Indiana in 1925 (689 deaths), the Tupelo (Mississippi) Tornado in 1936 (216 deaths), and the Woodward (Oklahoma) Tornado in Texas, Oklahoma, and Kansas in 1947 (169 deaths). Because of the Flint Tornado and an outbreak of killer tornadoes in April 1965, Michigan ranks third in the country, after Texas and Mississippi, for total number of tornadocaused deaths from 1953 through 1984. Nevertheless, it is the authors' contention that risk of injury or death by tornado in the state is not as high as the preceding might imply. Michigan's tornado history shows that even the densely populated southern third of the Lower Peninsula is at the margin of the United States Tornado Alley, the major tornado region extending northeastward from Texas
Recommended Citation
Howe, George M. and Ojala, Carl F.
(1986)
"Catastrophic Michigan Tornadoes, 1950-1984,"
The Geographical Bulletin: Vol. 28:
Iss.
2, Article 5.
Available at:
https://digitalcommons.kennesaw.edu/thegeographicalbulletin/vol28/iss2/5
