A Norton Shores homeowner is dealing with two immediate threats: one, an eroding dune in her backyard, and two, a roof that was ripped off by Tuesday's strong winds.
Kasey Sult Smith said around 5:30 p.m. she heard what sounded like tree branches hitting the roof of their lakeshore home. When Smith went outside to investigated, she saw the corner of the roof starting to "peel back like a can."
Smith and her husband moved quickly to get their cars out of the way.
"We were backing our cars out of the driveway. The entire roof went vertical about 40 feet in the air and just flipped over to the front of our house," she said.
A construction crew came out and laid tarp for now, but the Smiths are now dealing with a destroyed roof and a collapsing dune. The stairs that lead from the Smith's house to the beach are sliding down the sand.
"People need to know the power of the winds on the lake," said Smith. "They just can’t grasp the gravity of when they live inland."
See aerial video of erosion on the lakeshore:
A combination of this year's near-record high water levels and two back-to-back storms have eroded dunes on the Lake Michigan shoreline. The first gusty storm hit last Wednesday, and the National Weather Service said up to 20 feet of dune was washed away in some areas.
Tuesday, winds were forecasted to reach 30 mph with gusts hitting 50 mph. Waves reached 10 to 12 feet in height, damaging beaches, dunes and bluffs.
Homeowners on the lakeshore are scrambling to protect their homes, with some building new seawalls and others moving their houses further away from the shore.
The National Weather Service warned of flooding on the shoreline and along channels, river mouths and lakes that open into Lake Michigan including Mona Lake, White Lake and Muskegon Lake. The waves should gradually decrease in height overnight before subsiding to three feet or smaller by Wednesday evening.
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