Storm

WARSAW - As much as eight inches of snow piled up on the ground in Warsaw and closed schools because it made traveling extremely dangerous. All the downed trees and low hanging power lines were the biggest problem. There are a lot of reports coming into the Kosciusko County Highway Department about trees and lines that are down but they do not have to go too far to see all the problems the heavy snow caused. In the highway department parking lot, power lines sit on top of some of the workers trucks after a semi-truck driver snapped lines and a utility pole trying to clear low hanging lines.

Imagine snow higher than your ceiling. It may not be that hard to picture this since last year's snowfall was more than eight feet.  The 2010-2011 winter season brought a whopping 100-plus inches of snow to South Bend. And listen to this: The very same weather pattern that pounded Michiana last year has its sights set on us again this year.  One weather feature that can impact our winter season is what is known as either "La Niña" or "El Niño".  El Niño refers to warmer than normal sea surface water temperatures in the equatorial pacific while La Niña is the exact opposite.

BERRIEN COUNTY - A storm warning along Lake Michigan is stirring up winds expected to gust as high as 50 miles an hour and the chance for flooding in parts of Berrien and LaPorte Counties Wednesday and Thursday.  Roaring winds and sideways sand looked nothing like the New Buffalo beach we're used to.  Berrien County Emergency Management Coordinator Capt. Corey Burks said people living near the lakeshore should not take the storm warning lightly. “Take them seriously, don't just brush them off,” Burks said.

ST. JOSEPH COUNTY - An off-duty firefighter said he spotted a funnel cloud at Mayflower and State Road 23 around 1:30 Wednesday afternoon, sending tornado sirens blaring throughout St. Joseph County. Rob Rose is a trained storm spotter. He's also a South Bend Firefighter and a paramedic for medflight. Rose said the funnel cloud was twice this size of the photo he sent WSBT, it had a counterclockwise rotation and it lasted 7 minutes. He said once he saw the cloud, he knew it had potential danger.

All power has been restored to the more than 3,000 Midwest Energy Cooperative customers who lost service in Saturday evening's storms, according to a release. A spokesperson from Midwest Energy Cooperative said the storms that rolled through southwest Michigan and Northern Indiana Saturday evening resulted in more than 3,000 customers without power. Crews worked through the night to restore service by 3:30 a.m.

WSBT News continues to monitor a strong line of storms, pushing through the area this evening.  Berrien County was the first to get hit by it. Our weather department reported wind gusts as high as 60 miles per hour from the storm. The Berrien County Sheriff's Department reports trees and power lines down throughout the area. The National Weather Service is also reporting there is damage in Coloma. According to Indiana Michigan Power , the following number of customers are without power in these counties as of 9:20 p.m. Saturday: Berrien: 138 Van Buren: 254 Cass: 138 St. Joseph Co. MI: 496 LaPorte:1,971 St. Joseph County: 581 A representative of Midw est Energy Cooperative said as of 7 p.m.,about 800 remain without power, primarily in Three Rivers, Marcellus, Jones and Dowagiac.

A line of heavy storms made their way through Michiana late Sunday morning that brought heavy rain and wind for much of our viewing area and knocked out power in a few counties. As power was being restored to those customers, a second line of storms Sunday night again cut off power to many. As of 11:10 p.m. Sunday, I&M reports the following outages in three counties: Berrien (MI): 1,585 Van Buren (MI):739 St. Joseph (IN): 408  

WARSAW --  Much of Kosciusko County is still picking up from last week's storms, but one man is helping to clean up by recycling what he can through his new business called Indiana Urban Lumber. It's lumber that would have otherwise been mulched, burned or sent to the landfill, but it's now getting a second life. He's your run-of-the-mill woodworker, except Bill Burr mills his own wood. But his lumber didn't come from trees in a forest, it all came from cities, towns parks and people's yards. Some of it had to be cut down for various reasons, but much of it is the result of severe weather.

WARSAW - As power and tree crews were busy cleaning up from Friday's storms, another round of severe weather hit the area causing more power outages and adding to the mess. On Saturday the National Weather Service determined that a microburst from a supercell thunderstorm ripped through the area Friday causing widespread damage throughout Kosciusko County. 24 hours after the storm, crews were still cutting through what Mother Nature left behind.