Detroit’s first tornado since 1997 confirmed as severe storms sweep from Michigan to D.C.
Cleanup is underway from Michigan to Washington, D.C., after damaging winds, flooding rain and the first tornado in Detroit in almost 30 years.
Severe thunderstorms roared through Michigan on Sept. 3, possibly spawning a tornado and causing significant damage.
More than 530,000 utility customers were without power Friday morning after severe storms swept across the Midwest and mid-Atlantic Thursday night.
A line of intense thunderstorms charged east, producing widespread wind damage from Michigan to Washington, D.C., and spawning the first tornado in Detroit city limits since 1997.
Michigan accounted for more than half of the outages, while over 100,000 customers were without electricity in Pennsylvania, according to PowerOutage.us.
Downed trees cover a road after storm winds Thursday, Sept. 3, 2026, in Madison Heights, Mich. (AP Photo/Paul Sancya)
Detroit Mayor Mary Sheffield said Friday during a news conference that National Weather Service survey teams had confirmed a tornado touched down on the city's lower east city on Thursday.
Damage seen from a helicopter in Detroit, Michigan, on Sept. 3, 2026 after severe storms caused damage in Wayne County. (Image credit: Detroit Mayor Mary Sheffield)
The National Weather Service sent a team Friday to survey damage from Hamtramck through Detroit to Belle Isle on Friday. A tornado warning was issued for Wayne County shortly before 4 p.m. Thursday.
The tornado marks the first within Detroit’s city limits since July 2, 1997. That F2 tornado — rated under the original Fujita scale rather than today’s Enhanced Fujita scale — traveled from northwestern Detroit into Highland Park and Hamtramck and injured 90 people.
The latest tornado in Michigan came one day after the NWS confirmed that an EF0 tornado touched down in Marysville in St. Clair County on Wednesday evening. The tornado, with estimated peak winds of 75 mph, traveled about one-third of a mile and damaged trees. No injuries were reported.
Earlier rounds of heavy rain also triggered flash flooding in central Pennsylvania. Parts of Centre County received 2-4 inches of rain, flooding roads and prompting multiple water rescues Wednesday night into Thursday.
Storms brought periods of heavy rain and strong winds to parts of the north-central U.S. and Northeast on Sept. 3.
Lightning rocked across the mid-Atlantic on Thursday day, AccuWeather Lightning Network data shows.
From Wednesday night through Friday morning, there were 22,848 lightning events within a 25-mile radius of Pittsburgh. The busiest single minute was 6:18 p.m. Thursday, with 271 events, a strike roughly every 4.5 seconds.
After 35 Pittsburgh schools shifted to remote learning earlier in the week because of extreme heat, three additional schools moved classes online Friday because of storm-related power outages.
Maryland, northern Virginia and Washington, D.C., were also struck by damaging winds and drenching rain late Thursday. Gusts reached 70 mph in the District and 64 mph at Reagan National Airport, while falling trees damaged homes and vehicles and blocked roads. Tens of thousands of customers across the region lost power, and Prince George’s County Public Schools closed Friday because of storm damage and outages.
More than 4,000 cloud-to-ground lightning strikes hit in the Washington, D.C., area late Thursday night, according to AccuWeather's lightning detection network. Within 20 miles of downtown, 4,345 cloud-to-ground strikes were recorded between 10:41 p.m. Thursday and 12:55 a.m. Friday. The activity ramped up quickly and hit hard: the 11 p.m. hour alone accounted for 3,105 of those strikes, a rate of nearly one every second.
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