Tornado touches down near Ann Arbor, Mich.

Aerial footage shows at least a dozen homes were heavily damaged when a tornado touched down in Dexter, Mich.

By msnbc.com staff and news services

At least one tornado touched down Thursday evening northwest of Ann Arbor, Mich., but there were no immediate reports of injuries, emergency officials said.

The Detroit Free Press linked to YouTube video reportedly of the twister. ?We had lots of damage reports? from outside the town of Dexter, Marc Breckenridge, director of Emergency Management for Washtenaw County, told the ?paper.

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Thunderstorm watches and warnings were in effect for several counties in southeast Michigan, said ClickOnDetroit, the website for NBC station WDIV.

Breckenridge said around 200 people were displaced and a temporary shelter was opened at a nearby middle school. Police and fire crews were going door to door to check for any victims.

There were multiple reports of funnel clouds and two reports of touchdowns in Monroe County, Emergency Management Director Mark Hammond said. There, a funnel cloud moved across the expressway and badly damaged one home and turned over several vehicles.

In Washtenaw County, assessment crews counted nearly 100 homes with damage. The tornado started as a thunderstorm watch, which turned into a thunderstorm warning, then a tornado warning ? a series of warning that extended for an hour and a half.

Emergency management officials told NBC News that the county is a ?storm-ready community? that has invested in an outdoor weather alarm and that takes storm preparation seriously.

Forecasters also issued a severe storm watch on Thursday afternoon for parts of Indiana, Kentucky and Tennessee, warning of possible large hail, wind gusts of up to 70 miles an hour and dangerous lightning in a region raked by deadly tornadoes less than two weeks ago.

The Storm Prediction Center said the severe thunderstorm watch was in effect for southern Indiana, central Kentucky and middle Tennessee through 10 p. m. Thursday.

The Weather Service warned that "severe thunderstorms can and occasionally do produce tornadoes."

In Chicago, the official temperature at O'Hare International Airport on Thursday afternoon was 79 degrees, 5 degrees above the previous record for the day, and Indianapolis topped out at 80 degrees, 3 degrees above the old record.

In Washington, D.C., temperatures reached an all-time high, and in less than a week more than 900 new record highs have been tied or broken. NBC's Brian Williams reports.

Dave Samuhel, a meteorologist at Accuweather.com said the warm air covering much of the country's midsection was helping fuel the storms the Weather Service warned about on Thursday.

"It's just so warm that we're seeing thunderstorms pop up like popcorn the way you see it in the summertime," he said.

'Warming up mighty early' across parts of US

Accuweather.com said the unseasonably warm weather west of the Plains would continue into next week and spread further east into places like New York City, where residents were experiencing a more typical spring day on Thursday as winds out of the northeast kept daytime highs in the 40s.

Reuters contributed to this report.

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Source: http://usnews.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/03/15/10707357-tornado-touches-down-near-ann-arbor-michigan

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