Air Quality Alert for Wildfire Smoke

There's an Air Quality Alert for all of Michigan, Wisconsin and the north half of Minnesota through Monday evening

The Air Quality Alert is through Monday evening for all of Michigan, all of Wisconsin and the northern half of Minnesota.

Here’s the latest on the Manitoba wildfires. They are responding to 22 separate fires that are classified “out of control”. The response is 164 fire fighters, 49 helicopters, 6 water bombers and 5 other aircraft (probably dropping chemicals).

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This is the Storm Reports Map for Friday, 7/11. There were 213 reports of severe weather, including 2 tornadoes and 171 reports of wind damage. A bowing line of storms produced wind gusts of up to 90 mph across NE Iowa an SW Wisconsin.

Because of the timing of the front, the severe weather skipped West Michigan and occurred in southeast Michigan Sat. PM. Winds hit 61 mph in Detroit. Wind damage was reported in Dearborn, S. Lyon and half a dozen other cities.

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There were 174 reports of severe weather in the U.S. on Thursday, 7/10. On the map below, a red dot is where a tornado touched down, a blue dot is wind damage and a green dot is severe criteria hail (1” or greater in diameter).

There was just one tornado (which they got on video) at Canton, Iowa. There were 134 reports of wind damage, including gust to 83 mph at Garden City KS, 78 mph at Prosser NE and 74 mph at the airport in Des Moines, Iowa. There were 39 reports of severe criteria hail, including tennis ball-sized hail in Newberg ND.

This has been a big year for (mostly) small tornadoes. The tornado count is up to 1,324 in the U.S. Average-to-date is 996. However, of the 1,324 twisters, only 105 have been rated EF2 or higher. The rest have been EF0 or EF1. So far, only 21 tornadoes have been reported nationwide in the month of July.

There have been 68 tornado deaths this year in the U.S. More here: www.billsteffen.com Check out my YouTube Channel at billsteffen616.