Authorities in the Detroit area are cleaning up after severe storms Wednesday afternoon produced a tornado.
The U.S. National Weather Service (NWS) confirmed that an EF-1 tornado touched down in a residential area of Livonia, which resulted in homes damaged, hydro lines knocked down, and dozens of trees uprooted. Top winds reached about 153 kilometres per hour.
WJBK-TV Fox 2 reported on Wednesday evening that a two-year-old died when a tree fell on their home. The toddler's mother, who was sleeping on a bed with the child, is in critical condition at a local hospital.
"Crews worked tirelessly for over an hour, removing parts of the tree and lifting the tree with high-pressure airbags to extricate the victims," Livonia Fire Chief Robert Jennison told the station.
The preliminary NWS report indicated that the twister touched down in the area of Schoolcraft Road and Eccles Road in Plymouth at 3:30 p.m., and followed a northeasterly path for nine minutes before ending in the 7 Mile Road and Middlebelt area of Livonia, a distance of 8.8 kilometres.
An EF-1 is the second-lowest classification of tornado used by the NWS.
In nearby Farmington Hills, high winds resulted in the collapse of an overhang at a gas station at Middlebelt and 10 Mile Roads, which caused damage to vehicles and a pump to catch fire briefly. There were no reported injuries.
The line of powerful storms moved across Michigan Wednesday afternoon before crossing into southwestern Ontario. Heavy downpours accompanied this system, along with high winds.
