The tornado hit west Ann Arbor at 1.45am on 15 April, passing through Veterans Memorial park, where it knocked several mature oak trees and ripped up baseball field fences before setting its sights on a local ice rink.
“It came up through the parking lot and, in that time, the pressure differential between the tornado and the air inside the rink collapsed the wall,” said Scott Spooner, a manager at Ann Arbor Parks and Recreation.
“We had roughly 60,000 people use the rink last year, between high school hockey, men’s and women’s [and] private leagues. We don’t know what the timeline for reopening is [but] we’re not going to be opening in September. At this point, it’s hard for me to foresee opening next winter at all.”
This was not the only tornado to create havoc in Michigan this year. In March, communities across nine counties were hit by two rounds of devastating tornadoes that killed four people, including a 12-year-old boy, in what was the earliest EF-3 tornado to hit the state in documented history.
The state averages 15 tornadoes a year but last year saw 33. This year, it’s already experienced 15.
The tornado outbreaks follow some of the worst flooding the state has seen in decades. Last month, several Michigan dams and levees were at risk of failure, and an evacuation order was issued in Cheboygan in the north of the state.
Florida, California and the mountain west are often held up as US regions worst affected by climate change now and into the future. But recent events suggest parts of the Great Lakes, sometimes referred to as being “climate proof”, are suffering too.
Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema) officials this month find themselves on the ground across 30 Michigan counties, assessing the fallout of the tornadoes and flooding.
Fears are now growing that the floods could slow the takeoff of outdoor recreation this spring, an essential local economic driver for thousands of small businesses as campgrounds, trails, equestrian and other facilities across 22 Michigan counties face huge and costly cleanup operations.
This year’s flooding and tornadoes appear to be part of a wider trend in a state where severe weather events from past years are still placing huge financial burdens on residents.
This month marks six years since the failure of the Edenville and Sanford dams, a pair of privately owned, earthen hydroelectric facilities 100 miles north-east of Grand Rapids. The dam collapses were the result of about 8in of rainfall and saw 10,000 people evacuated and 2,500 homes and businesses damaged or destroyed at an estimated cost of $175m.
“We were in the process of getting boats and watercraft drug up to safety; the water was five to six feet higher than it had ever been,” said Lynn Coleman, who filmed the terrifying footage of the Edenville dam’s collapse.
“The water trickled out the backside of the dike. It took an hour and 42 minutes for the lake to completely drain.”
Coleman, who runs the Wixom Waters campground a stone’s throw from the Edenville dam, has since faced financial challenges.
“We run a campground that’s based on water [activities] … the business has lost an average of $35,000 a year. Now, with the rebuild [of the dam], we’re hit with just under $30,000 a year in lake assessment [fees] and that goes for the next 40 years.” The cost of rebuilding the Edenville and three other dams that failed in the flooding is estimated at almost $400m.
Residents have also been dealing with the dismissal last month of a lawsuit they had brought against the state of Michigan. The case claimed the state failed to act on repeated safety warnings that the dam was at risk due to allowing its owner, Boyce Hydro Power, to raise water levels.
Michigan’s newfound susceptibility to extreme weather is down to a few factors, experts say, noting that in the spring, the state often finds itself caught in the transition boundary of the jet stream between warm, moist air from the south and cold, dry air from Canada. This spring, it’s been unusually active.
“When you have warm, moist air that clashes with dry air, you get a very sharp boundary in temperatures that will cause severe weather. And that’s what we’ve seen,” says Lisa DeChano-Cook, a professor at Western Michigan University’s school of environment, geography and sustainability.
“We also have a strong temperature contrast between the Great Lakes water temperatures and the Gulf moisture. More precipitation can come down, and we can have more extreme outcomes. That’s some level of what we saw with the Edenville dam.”
Last year, a freezing rain storm destroyed millions of acres of trees in northern parts of Michigan’s lower peninsula, rendering hundreds of miles of electricity and utility infrastructure useless and cutting power for weeks to thousands of people.
The cost of that – hundreds of millions of dollars – has created political ructions for leaders and utility customers that, as with Edenville residents, are set to continue for years.
But not everyone is certain that climate change is solely responsible for the extreme weather events.
“It’s very possible [that climate change played a role]. Events seem to be getting worse and I’m not sure that they are. There have been severe weather events across the state ever since I can remember,” said Coleman in Edenville.
“Do I think that we need to take care of issues such as climate change? Absolutely. Do I blame it all on that? I’m not a scientist so I can’t really say.”
Researchers, however, say the links are undeniable. The number of billion-dollar disaster events in the US adjusted for inflation rose from 33 in the 1980s to 198 in the decade to 2024, according to the National Centers for Environmental Information, a government agency.
“It’s not necessarily new, and yet I think it is linked to climate change,” said DeChano-Cook of the severe weather facing the state. “We’re seeing this waviness in the jet stream much more often in the spring and the fall than we used to.”
Warmer temperatures in the Arctic weaken the polar jet stream, which in turn can cause it to bend more to the north and south. For the Great Lakes region and southern Canada, that can lead to more extreme weather events across a larger area.
Back in Ann Arbor, local authorities have found themselves preparing for the upcoming summer season while having to deal with the aftermath of the tornado damage.
With a public pool situated next to the damaged Veterans Memorial ice rink, city authorities have decided to hold off on construction work on the rink building in order to open the pool as soon as possible.
“We don’t want to have a construction site next to the pool,” said Spooner.
Residents’ access to city-owned ice rinks will be cut in half next season, since this is one of just two.
While he couldn’t put a dollar cost on what the closure will probably set the City back, Spooner says it’s about more than just money.
“There’s a revenue hit,” he said, “and a social hit.”
