BRANCH COUNTY, MI (WTVB) – Branch County got through Monday night’s storms in relatively good shape but other parts of southwest Michigan were not as fortunate.
Branch County was placed under a severe thunderstorm watch Monday evening and the fast moving line of storms eventually led the National Weather Service to issue a severe thunderstorm warning for St. Joseph County.
The storms resulted in large trees being knocked down in the Three Rivers area. There were also reports of a 67 mile per hour wind gust and one inch hail in Berrien County.
But as the storms approached Branch County, they seem to lose their punch and the National Weather Service did not issue any more warnings once the one in St. Joseph County expired.
The Branch County Memorial Airport west of Coldwater measured a wind gust of 39 miles an hour just before 8:00 p.m.. As the storms went through Coldwater, there were strong winds, rain and lightning.
Almost 2,400 Consumers Energy customers in Calhoun County and another 1,100 in St. Joseph County lost their power Monday night. Branch County had 241 outages but just about everybody was back on line Tuesday morning.
More severe damage was reported in northern Indiana. WANE-TV in Fort Wayne reports the severe storms had winds exceeding 70 mph which led to several trees and power lines coming down. A woman was killed when the storms knocked over a mobile home in Fort Wayne.
