That's intense!

frequently gets tornadoes.

Back in the 1970s, I lived in Toledo from March to October one year. We got the "tail end" of a tornado that struck the southern Detroit area. Blew a metal garbage can through our car window. (The car was parked with nobody inside. Mess to clean up, but no injuries.)

Minnesota gets way more, they average 45 a year, Michigan only 16. The Dakotas get a lot too.

Lake Michigan’s cool waters take a lot of steam out of storm systems as they cross it. Wry often you’ll see severe weather in Wisconsin that piddles out over the lake.

This was such a rare event because it developed over land.

get so many tornadoes.

Here on western NY, we sometimes get storms a few hours or a day after Michigan. They blow across Lake Erie. If a storm is large enough, we get it almost at the same time. The night that the latest Michigan tornadoes struck, we got strong thunderstorms here overnight, but no tornadoes or watches for any.

A supercell storm can produce tornadoes across bodies of water. In 1985, a supercell storm out of eastern Ohio produced several tornadoes across eastern Ohio, northwestern PA across to central PA, to western NY, and across the lake and Niagara River into Ontario. The strengths of the twisters ranged from EF1 to a few EF3s, and at least one EF4. Several deaths. Whole towns wiped out.