Michigan Spring Storm Prep Guide: How to Protect Your Home & What to Do If Damage Strikes
Michigan’s spring storm season is here. And it’s quickly turned into a rough one, with data from the National Weather Service showing that 2025 is already ranking among the ten worst years in history in terms of tornado prevalence. If your home is in the firing line, the consequences can be devastating, and facing the prospect of a storm damage repair job may feel overwhelming to begin with. Here, we take a look at some of the steps you can take to safeguard your property ahead of a storm – and, just as significantly, what you need to be doing if the worst happens.
Understanding The Threat: How Common Is Storm Damage in Michigan?
Firstly, it’s worth just considering why storm damage restoration is such a significant topic for Michigan homeowners in the first place. While the state isn’t traditionally part of “Tornado Alley”, tornadoes have still resulted in more than $1.3 billion’s worth of property damage since 1950 – and, as said above, they appear to be occurring more often. More generally, the Great Lakes State is among the windiest in the country, ranking behind only Alaska and Wyoming. The southeastern part of Michigan, including Detroit, typically experiences between 11 and 13 rainy days during the springtime. Further north, it’s worth remembering that ice storms pose a threat well into the spring – including the crippling one which hit the eastern Upper Peninsula just recently.
Preventative Measures: How to Prepare for Severe Weather
Unless you’re particularly unfortunate, the scale of the task facing you when it comes to storm damage repair is determined almost exclusively by your ability to get ahead of the game. Setting aside the time to inspect your home and its surrounds and making sure you carry out any necessary adjustments is something you’ll undoubtedly thank yourself for further down the road.
- Start From the Top: Your roof is your home’s first line of defense and plays a critical role in maintaining a house’s overall integrity. Begin by checking for loose or missing shingles, which can provide an entry point for rain and leave your home susceptible to water damage. Providing it’s safe to do so, you should also try and remove any debris that’s accumulated on your roof, like branches and leaves, which can trap moisture. Furthermore, while it’s hardly a pleasant task, cleaning out your gutters should be a matter of course; if your gutters can’t do their job properly, it’ll only create another (potentially more costly) problem elsewhere.
- Get Out Your Garden Tools: There’s no telling how much trouble can be caused by falling trees and limbs. While a storm is ravaging outside, living close to a wooded area or in the shadow of a large tree can turn a stressful experience into a genuinely scary one. Where possible, you shouldn’t leave anything to chance; remove anything that’s dead and prune wherever necessary. And pay close attention to your neighbors’ yards, too – don’t be afraid to raise any concerns you may have about precarious-looking trees or limbs.
- Nail Down Your Outdoor Items: Garden furniture, grills and trash bins can swiftly turn into projectiles once a strong wind sets in. Make sure they’re all anchored or, preferably, stored away before they have a chance to pose a threat to your property (or other people’s!)
- Stormproof Your Doors and Windows: The goal here is to stop the elements penetrating the interior of your house. Make sure all door and window frames are adequately sealed, applying fresh caulk where necessary. Storm shutters can provide an extra layer of defense, while it’s always worth checking other wall openings, such as vents.
- Review Your Insurance Status: Quite simply, set aside five minutes to check your policy covers anything that might happen in the event of a storm – wind and water damage being the obvious two.
Safety First, Every Time: Getting Through the Storm
You’ve only ever one priority when a storm hits: keeping yourself and your loved ones safe. Everything else, no matter what the potential expense, can wait.
- Get Inside: If you’re outdoors, you obviously need to identify a sturdy building to shelter in immediately. If you happen to be on your own property, a garden shed is not an option – they are not safe.
- Stay Away from Doors and Windows: Even inside your home, certain spots are far better places to be than others. Even when doors and windows look to be in good condition, they still present a risk. If you have one, move into your basement. If you don’t, just try to move clear of exterior walls.
- Keep Yourself Informed: You shouldn’t necessarily trust your own judgement during a storm; a slight lull can easily be misinterpreted as the end of a storm entirely, with potentially grave consequences. Make sure emergency alerts are enabled on your phone and monitor the local news as much as you can. And if tornadoes are a possibility, remember the difference between a “watch” and a “warning” – a watch means conditions are favorable for a tornado to develop, while a warning requires you to head for your safe place immediately.
- Avoid Floodwater: Again, water can be deceptive where its risk is concerned; even a few inches can be dangerous and sweep you off your feet. Quite simply, you should stay clear of it.
When The Worst Happens…
You’re obviously going to know pretty quickly if your home has suffered catastrophic damage – ultimately, though, as long as you and your loved ones are healthy, any situation can be salvaged. Other types of damage can be less obvious initially, but before you go looking for anything awry, you must continue being vigilant; you’re as likely to injure yourself during a storm’s clean-up as you are during the storm itself.
- Hazards Can Be Anywhere: In the wake of a storm affecting your property, you can’t take anything for granted. As you begin to take a look around, you have to be wary of just about everything: downed power lines, gas leaks, broken glass, exposed nails and plenty of other dangers in between. Ultimately, the first thing you have to do is ensure you don’t compromise your own safety any further.
- Continue Taking Precautions: If you do find yourself faced with a downed power line or a suspected gas leak, make sure you keep your distance. As long as it’s safe to do so, turn off your electrical system at the main circuit breaker and call 911. In the case of a gas leak, leave your house immediately.
- Identify What’s Damaged and Document It: Just as you can find hazards anywhere, you can find damage anywhere. As you walk through your property, it’s important you photograph, or video, anything that’s been adversely affected – it’ll prove hugely important during the subsequent insurance claim, which you should be looking to initiate as soon as possible. Broadly speaking, the damage you encounter following a spring storm will fall into one of three categories: fire damage, water damage or wind damage. The first of those will obviously be the most apparent (and urgent), while mold can take hold as a result of water damage.
- Damage Limitation: Once you’ve got to grips with the scale of your problem, you can establish what, if anything, you can do to stop it getting any worse – providing it’s safe to do so. Remember that immediate repair jobs are just a means to an end – they certainly don’t have to be perfect. For example, if you’ve got water continuing to seep through a window, board the window up or cover it with tarp. It can then be taken care of properly at a later date, which leads us on nicely to our next section…
Where The Experts Come In
There’s only so much you should ever try to do on your own. Once the wellbeing of you and your loved ones has been accounted for and you’ve identified what you’re dealing with, you should enlist the help of a trusted restoration provider, like X-Cel Restoration, to get your home back to its original condition as quickly as possible. Working directly with your insurance company, X-Cel provide a 24/7 emergency service to deal with storm damage in the immediate aftermath before commencing a wider restoration process, which can include:
- Fire Damage Restoration: After removing debris, ash and soot and cleaning walls, ceilings and any other affected surfaces, X-Cel Restoration focus on repairing any structural damage which may have occurred before making your house feel like home again, installing new flooring, painting and replacing (or mending) damaged possessions.
- Water Damage Restoration: X-Cel’s water restoration program involves water removal, structural drying and returning both structures and contents to their original state. Advanced thermal imaging and FLIR (Forward Looking Infrared) can even detect moisture that’s hidden in walls or ceilings, while X-Cel also provide more specialist services like sewage removal and treatments for basements and crawl spaces.
- Mold Remediation and Removal: Once water penetrates your home, mold spores can multiply exponentially in the space of just 48 hours. X-Cel prevents mold from spreading further, and kill off what’s already there, by using air scrubbers, HEPA vacuums and anti-fungal/microbial treatments. Furniture, clothing and other restorable items are then cleaned and sanitized.
X-Cel Restoration: Lessening Your Load
Facing up to the impacts of storm damage can be a destabilizing and deeply personal kind of trauma. The event itself can often be bad enough, but things can quickly feel like they’re getting out of hand if you’re left with widespread damage, knowing you have to deal with the initial clean-up, a long list of tasks to get things back to normal again and goodness knows how many phone calls to your insurance provider. Put simply, it can all take an enormous toll.
Reaching out to a company who specialize in storm damage restoration and can guide you through the entirety of the process can make all the difference, then. From the outset, X-Cel Restoration look to take the weight off your shoulders and handle every single aspect of your claim, striving to get you back on your feet as quickly as possible. Ultimately, what they deliver is the one thing you need the most after seeing your home fall victim to storm damage: peace of mind.