Early-Season Tornado Outbreak Kills Eight in Michigan and Oklahoma, Raising Questions About Preparedness

The house on Tuttle Road is now a slab.

Only the concrete foundation remains where a lakeside home once stood on Union Lake, near the small village of Union City in southern Michigan. Splintered lumber, insulation and children’s toys are scattered across the shoreline, tangled in bare trees that were stripped of their branches in seconds.

On Friday, March 6, a powerful tornado with estimated winds of at least 150 mph roared across this neighborhood, killing three people and injuring a dozen more. The same storm system had already killed a mother and daughter in Oklahoma the night before and would claim a 12-year-old boy in another corner of Michigan before the day was over.

In less than 48 hours, the early-season outbreak produced more than two dozen tornadoes across the central United States and left eight people dead in Michigan and Oklahoma. It struck weeks before the traditional peak of tornado season in the Midwest, flattening homes, toppling power lines and raising new questions about how prepared communities are for severe weather that is arriving earlier and hitting places that rarely see high-end storms in March.

Authorities say four people died in southwest Michigan and four in Oklahoma as the storm system swept from the Plains into the Great Lakes.

Deaths and damage across two states

In Michigan, the dead included three residents of the Union Lake area and 12-year-old Silas Anderson, who was critically injured when a tornado hit his family’s property near Edwardsburg in Cass County. In Oklahoma, an EF2 tornado west of Fairview on March 5 blew a vehicle off U.S. Highway 60, killing 47-year-old Jodie Owens and her 13-year-old daughter, Lexi. The following night, a tornado near Beggs in Okmulgee County destroyed a manufactured home and killed two people inside, according to the Oklahoma Department of Emergency Management.

“This is a devastating situation for families in southern Michigan,” Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer said as she activated the State Emergency Operations Center on Friday evening. “I am activating our State Emergency Operations Center to coordinate an all-hands-on-deck response to severe weather in southwestern Michigan.”

Whitmer said she would issue a state of emergency for Branch, Cass and St. Joseph counties to speed state assistance for cleanup and recovery.

Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt issued his own emergency declaration on Saturday for eight counties, including Major and Okmulgee. He said the order was intended “to ensure Oklahomans have the support and resources they need after last night’s storms.”

Michigan’s EF3 near Union City

The deadliest single tornado so far has been the one that swept around Union Lake. A survey by the National Weather Service office in Northern Indiana rated it an EF3 on the Enhanced Fujita scale, with peak winds of about 150 mph. Meteorologists said the tornado carved through a lakeside subdivision west of Union City, ripping homes from their foundations and scattering debris hundreds of yards.

“Several well-built homes were completely destroyed, leaving only the basement or slab behind,” the weather service said in a preliminary public information statement. In that neighborhood alone, three people were killed and 12 injured.

Residents described having only minutes to seek shelter as the sky turned a muddy green and the roar of the storm grew louder.

“I looked out toward the lake and all I could see was this wall of debris coming at us,” said one Union Lake homeowner, speaking in a brief television interview as she stood in front of her destroyed house. “We grabbed the kids and ran for the basement. When we came back up, the roof was gone.”

The Union Lake tornado was part of a single supercell thunderstorm that formed in LaPorte County, Indiana, and moved northeast into Michigan, producing multiple twisters along the way.

Shortly after 3 p.m. Friday, Cass County’s central dispatch began receiving 911 calls about a possible tornado near Conrad Road north of U.S. 12 in Milton Township, close to the village of Edwardsburg. Sheriff’s deputies and firefighters responding to the scene found heavy damage on a rural property and a critically injured boy.

The Cass County sheriff later identified him as 12-year-old Silas Anderson. He was taken to a South Bend, Indiana, hospital, where he died. The sheriff’s office said his death was “a weather-related incident” caused by a tornado.

The same storm later intensified as it crossed St. Joseph County. Near Three Rivers, an EF2 tornado with winds of around 130 mph tore through a commercial corridor along U.S. 131, ripping roofs from a Menards home improvement store and nearby businesses, toppling grain bins and flipping vehicles in the parking lot. Authorities reported about 10 injuries there.

By late afternoon, the storm had strengthened further over Branch County. As warnings were issued for Union City and surrounding areas, the tornado drilled across the Union Lake subdivision, flattening multiple homes and snapping power poles.

Michigan State Police said multiple agencies conducted door-to-door searches in the debris field Friday night and into Saturday morning. Power companies reported extensive outages as crews worked to replace downed lines.

Oklahoma tornadoes: Fairview and Beggs

Farther south, Oklahomans had been dealing with the same storm system a day earlier.

On the night of March 5, a supercell in northwestern Oklahoma spawned a tornado west of Fairview in Major County. The National Weather Service office in Norman rated that tornado an EF2 after it traveled several miles across open country.

Major County’s emergency manager said a vehicle traveling along U.S. 60 was caught in the tornado’s path and thrown, killing the driver and her teenage daughter. Photos from the scene showed the twisted remains of the vehicle in a field, surrounded by mangled fencing and scattered debris.

The next evening, a new round of storms erupted across eastern Oklahoma. The weather service office in Tulsa logged at least seven tornado tracks in and around the Tulsa metropolitan area and nearby counties.

In Beggs, a town about 30 miles south of Tulsa, a strong tornado tracked through rural neighborhoods east of town. The Okmulgee County Sheriff’s Office said two people were killed when a manufactured home was hit and destroyed. Aerial images showed the home reduced to its foundation, with debris spread across an adjacent field. Officials reported damage to Beggs school facilities and dozens of other structures, along with widespread power outages.

A rare March outbreak — and scrutiny of warnings

The outbreak has been especially jarring in Michigan, where residents are more accustomed to snow in early March than violent tornadoes.

Tornadoes can occur in any month, but Michigan’s tornado season usually peaks in June. State climatology records show the state averages fewer than one tornado in March each year. Meteorologists say Friday’s EF3 near Union City ranks among Michigan’s strongest March tornadoes on record, comparable to a powerful storm that struck West Bloomfield Township in March 1976.

The rarity has sparked renewed attention to early-season severe weather in the Great Lakes. In recent years, March tornado counts nationwide have run higher than late-20th-century averages. Scientists caution against attributing any single outbreak directly to climate change, but say that a warming atmosphere and warmer Gulf of Mexico can fuel more frequent environments favorable for severe thunderstorms earlier in the year, including in parts of the Midwest not traditionally associated with high-end March tornadoes.

Michigan also had one of its most active tornado years on record in 2025, and emergency managers say that history is forcing a reassessment.

“Friday’s storms are another reminder that severe weather is not confined to a few summer months,” said an official with the Michigan State Police Emergency Management and Homeland Security Division. “We have to plan for tornadoes earlier in the season and make sure our warning systems reach everyone, especially in rural areas.”

How well those warning systems worked is already under scrutiny.

Residents around Union Lake have questioned why there were no outdoor warning sirens in their area and say they did not receive wireless emergency alerts on their phones, even though a tornado warning had been issued. In Cass County, online posts from neighbors near Edwardsburg allege that the tornado was on the ground several minutes before a warning appeared on television or phones.

The National Weather Service has not publicly addressed those specific complaints but routinely reviews its warning performance after deadly events. Warning lead time can vary as storms rapidly intensify or cycle, and siren systems are owned and operated by local governments, leading to patchy coverage.

In Oklahoma, officials said warnings were in effect for both the Fairview and Beggs storms, but emphasized that some of the victims were in especially vulnerable situations: on the road at night and inside a manufactured home.

National statistics show that residents of mobile and manufactured homes, as well as people caught in vehicles, are disproportionately represented in tornado fatalities. In many rural areas, homes lack basements or dedicated storm shelters, and community safe rooms are limited.

Communities begin to grieve

For the families who lost loved ones last week, the technical debates will come later.

In Cass County, neighbors have left flowers and stuffed animals near the driveway where Silas Anderson used to ride his bike. In Major County, a small memorial has appeared along U.S. 60 where the Owens’ vehicle left the road. On Union Lake, residents are sifting through what is left of their homes, pulling photographs and keepsakes from the rubble.

Meteorologists note that the traditional peak of tornado season in the Plains and Midwest is still weeks away. The March outbreak, they say, is an early indication of what the next few months could bring.

As the last of the debris was cleared from Tuttle Road over the weekend, one Union City resident surveyed the bare concrete where a neighbor’s house once stood and summed up what many across the region are feeling.

“If this is what March looks like now,” he said, “I’m scared to see June.”