GAYLORD, Mich. — The tornado was as powerful as it was rare.
On the morning of May 20, 2022, a cold front blasted the Lake Michigan shoreline, forming into a supercell thunderstorm as it collided with warm, humid air hanging over the city of Gaylord.
When it touched down west of town, the twister barreled toward I-75, pitching baseball-sized hail at speeds of 150 miles per hour. The National Weather Service later categorized the tornado as an EF3— a type of storm not seen in Michigan since 2012.
"The walls started coming in like that right toward me and I went flying with my wife," Charles Mills said.
The Nottingham Mobile Home Park where Mills lived took the worst of the winds— 95% destroyed, according to officials.
"Everything's gone. People are hurt. People died. I don't know what to say. It's just bad," said Laurine Webber, a Nottingham resident. "I’m devastated. Everybody’s devastated. Heartbroken. There’s too much loss here. It’s not fair."
In the span of 22 minutes, Webber lost her home and two neighbors. The rest of her city saw roofs torn from businesses, power lines ripped to the ground and 44 people hurt.
In an ill-fated Maurices, 19-year-old Avery Rausch took shelter in a fitting room while working her shift. She saw the tornado's rotation, the width of two football fields, before ducking beneath a door: "Like you watch the roof fly off and you watch everything falling. You just don't think that you're going to survive that. It's the worst feeling that you can ever imagine."
Rausch says "lucky is an understatment," leaving with only a cut on her head and a concussion.
But back at Nottingham, cleanup continued for days and weeks, with Webber bouncing from hotel to hotel, waiting on insurance.
"You know, you go home at night and that's your place where you can relax, you don't have that," she said.
But in the in-between, Gaylord filled the gaps, handing out food, clothing and more.
"That's a given in Gaylord," said Webber. "The community is always there for each other. That's not even something we think about. It's there. It's not like most places."
Now, nearly one year later, the Gaylord tornado hasn't gone down as the fastest or the deadliest in state history, but only four other twisters in Michigan with the same or stronger wind speeds have ever touched down so far north.
