BEECHER -- Nearly 60 years after one of the deadliest tornadoes in U.S. history swept through without warning, Beecher residents were once again caught off guard by a tornado Tuesday night, May 28. That's despite the presence of a warning system that the aftermath of the 1953 Beecher tornado helped create.

Sirens warning residents of Tuesday's tornado in the Beecher area weren't activated until the tornado was already on the ground because of a National Weather Service delay in issuing a tornado warning.

National Weather Service records show the tornado touched down at 9:01 p.m. but a tornado warning wasn't issued for the storm until 9:06 p.m -- two minutes after Genesee County 911 had already activated sirens in response to the sighting of a funnel cloud by a Mt. Morris Township police officer.

Genesee County 911 operates the county's 83 warning systems for the county's emergency management department.

The tornado touched down at the southern end of Hasselbring Park in Flint and continued northeast to near Harry Street and Humphrey Avenue in Beecher with wind speeds of 105 mph and a maximum width of 300 yards.

There were no serious injuries from the Beecher storm, nor from the other tornadoes across the county Tuesday.

"We didn't hear the siren until it was over," said Victor McEwen, 70, who survived the 1953 Beecher tornado and whose Rex Avenue home suffered minor damage during the storm this month.

McEwen said he was forced to rely on his experience from the 1953 tornado to get him and his wife to his home's basement when the storm hit.

James Roberts, 39, said he and his family were watching the storm from the porch of his home on Knickerbocker Avenue near Summit Street in Mt. Morris Township.

"We had no warning," Roberts said, adding that the family never heard a siren go off before the storm, but when winds started gusting around his home, he knew it was time he and his family sought shelter in his home's basement.

The deadly 1953 Beecher tornado was one of the three storms that year that led to the implementation of the nation's severe weather watch program less than two weeks later.

Tornadoes touched down that year, killing people and destroying everything in their paths, in Waco, Texas; Beecher; and Worcester, Mass.

The Beecher tornado killed 116.

"1953 was a bad year for storms," said Richard Pollman, warning coordinator meteorologist for the National Weather Service.

Prior to those 1953 events, a weather warning would have been issued, but the ability to quickly notify people in those areas was limited, Pollman said.

It wasn't until after those storms that the Severe Local Storm Warning Center, the predecessor to the Storm Prediction Center, was created and a watch system was organized and made official, according to Pollman

The system was put to the test Tuesday when four tornadoes swept across Genesee County -- destroying homes and uprooting trees.

Matt Mosteiko, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in White Lake Township, said smaller tornadoes like the one in the Beecher area on Tuesday, are difficult to predict because they can touch down and finish before they are ever detected by the weather service's radar system.

"It takes roughly five minutes to do a complete radar scan," said Mosteiko.

Tuesday's Beecher tornado lasted only five minutes and Mosteiko said a tornado watch was not issued for the area, since widespread severe weather was not expected.

Mosteiko added that the Beecher-area tornado differed from the five others that touched down Tuesday in southern Genesee County and in Shiawassee County.

The five tornadoes that occurred along a stretch from Perry to Goodrich were all part of the same supercell -- a potentially severe storm formation, Mosteiko said. The Beecher tornado spawned out of a formation separate from the main storm.

"We paid a little more attention to the main supercell," said Mosteiko.

Genesee County Sheriff Robert Pickell, who oversees the county's emergency management department, said the storm did not meet any of the three criteria needed to activate the sirens prior to being spotted by the officer.

Pickell said the sirens are activated by Genesee 911 when the weather service issues a tornado warning, a trained spotter reports a funnel cloud or his department receives other reliable information that a potentially serious weather event is possible.

These advancements in meteorology and technology and the advent of the warning system -- despite its flaws --may have helped residents in southern Genesee and Shiawassee counties avoid death and injury Tuesday night.

"We understand what storms produce the strong and violent tornadoes," Pollman said. "We have observing equipment, computer models that help us with forecasting and help us issue the warnings 10 to 15 minutes before the tornado touches down.

Residents in the southern portion of the county received an extended warning about tornadoes.

The county's emergency sirens were activated every 10 minutes following their initial activation because of the Beecher tornado, according to Genesee 911 records.

Tornado warning sirens began sounding in the southern part of Genesee County at 9:04 p.m. and continued wailing every 10 minutes until the tornado warning expired at 10:18 p.m., according to Genesee 911 records.

An EF2 tornado touched down near Odell Road, just south of Linden Road, in Fenton Township at 9:30 p.m.

The storm's 115 mph winds left a 2.8-mile swath of snapped-in-half trees, damaged houses and building debris, but no injuries.

Goodrich-area residents were given more than 40 minutes warning before an EF2 tornado touched down at 9:54 p.m. near Vassar Road and Pointe North Drive.

That storm's 130 mph winds left a 4.6 mile path of destruction, but no injuries.

Mosteiko said Southeastern Michigan typically experiences only six tornadoes a year so to experience six in one night in a two-county stretch is rare.

"We did pretty good on this event," said Mosteiko.

Staff writer Shaun Byron contributed to this report.