ALTO (WKZO AM/FM) — The National Weather Service has looked at the damage in Kent County and confirmed it was a Tornado that left a 5-1/4 mile path of destruction across a rural section just to the south east of Grand Rapids Monday night.
It was an EF-1 with peak winds of about 90mph.
The spring of 2017 has gotten off to a stormy start in West Michigan, and that trend may continue.
National Weather Service Meteorologist Bill Marino says they had never recorded a tornado in Michigan in February before, and there were five that struck just north of the Indiana border.
He says it tends to get stormy here when the water in the Gulf of Mexico gets hotter than usual and this is one of those years.
He says it will be particularly important this spring that you pay attention to weather warnings, because we could be in for a bumpy ride.