Severe weather was spotty in the Central Lower Peninsula, but one local village took the brunt of some heavy wind damage.
Sunday evening, a quick and powerful storm cut through Edmore in Montcalm County, causing significant damage to the village’s cemetery.
Some say they saw a tornado, the National Weather Service says it was just high winds.
There were no watches or warnings for Montcalm County and the surrounding area had calm skies.
“It was weird, it just popped out of nowhere,” says Dennis Smith of Edmore.
Unless you were right near Vinewood Cemetary, you probably didn’t even know it happened but those nearby thought they saw a tornado.
“My boy come home screaming and hollering that there was a tornado coming down in the cemetery,” says Smith, “He was out here doing some Pokemonning and he couldn’t figure out why the fire alarms weren’t going off.”
While it wasn’t a tornado, the high winds caused significant damage, taking down trees, tossing branches and toppling headstones.
“We have to figure out where everything goes,” says Smith, “Get stuff back where it belongs because a lot of family members have already put out stuff and stuff is scattered all over the place.”
Much of that “stuff” was decorations set for Memorial Day weekend.
“They had already started placing the flags at all the different headstones from the veterans,” says cemetery volunteer Shirley Wulff.
Families and volunteers will spend the week getting it all in order before the holiday.
“It’s very important to us to look the best,” says Wulff.
Most of the tree limbs will be cleaned up by Tuesday but the rest of the week will be spent fixing headstones and replacing flags.
© 2023 - 910 Media Group
