A storm that hit a Detroit suburb earlier this week knocked down trees that ripped off the roof of Abby Sata’s family home, sending water gushing underneath.

Although they now have a giant crane to remove the tree from the house, they were lucky no one was injured. The tornado that damaged Sata’s home in Livonia, Michigan, devastated several neighborhoods and knocked down a tree Wednesday that killed a child. It developed so quickly that there was no advance notice from the National Weather Service or others, which would normally have activated warning sirens.

Sata, 21, said he received a storm warning over the phone, but there was no indication a tornado was coming.

“I was in shock,” she said. “That would have been so helpful. I would have gotten the information even three seconds before the tornado.”

Jacqueline Anderson, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service’s Detroit office, said the tornado in Livonia “started to spin out just as quickly as it was over.” The tornado, which is known to be weak and brief, traveled about 5 miles (8 kilometers). More powerful tornadoes produced by intense thunderstorms can stay on the ground for 30, 40 or even 100 miles and are much easier to forecast and issue warnings for, she said.

Although tornado-forecasting tools, which rely on a combination of weather radar and local observations, have improved “tenfold” over the past few decades, Anderson said short-lived tornadoes can still be “quite challenging in terms of giving warning.”

Victor Gensini, an associate professor at Northern Illinois University who studies tornadoes and extreme weather, said forecasters make tornado forecasts every day, taking into account different weather elements. But sometimes these conditions occur on a smaller scale – for example, a sudden wind blowing off a lake.

This month has been terrible for tornadoes in the US. The number of tornadoes in the country in April was the second highest on record.

A series of storms spawned in suburban Maryland Unusually powerful tornado that knocked down treesThe storm on Wednesday night damaged buildings and downed power lines.

But Gensini said while the national numbers are slightly above average at this time, it’s too early to make definitive statements about the year’s total tornadoes. He said as many as 1,500 tornadoes can occur in the U.S. each year, and statistically this time of year is the most likely for tornado activity in the U.S.; many of them just don’t occur in high-profile locations or aren’t captured in clear photographs.

“The tornadoes this year are very visible,” he said.

Gensini, who also studies how climate change is affecting tornado activity, said the science of attributing twister-spawning storms to climate change is still in its infancy, and connecting the dots to an individual tornado can be tough. But looking at broad-scale trends, his team has found that areas farther south and east in the U.S. are becoming more likely to develop tornadoes than previously thought.

Tornado warnings were issued for parts of several other states, including Ohio, New Jersey and Delaware, on Wednesday night. In Ohio, a suspected tornado tore away the canopy of a gas station in the eastern village of Frazeysburg on Thursday and caused heavy damage to a restaurant and a discount store. Jeff Jadwin, emergency management director in Muskingum County, said eight people suffered minor injuries, mostly from flying debris.

Tornadoes are nothing new in Maryland, but they are relatively rare — especially a massive tornado like the one seen Wednesday night. At least five people were injured, and the weather service issued 22 tornado warnings on Wednesday, the fourth most issued in a single day by the office that covers Maryland, the District of Columbia, northern Virginia and the eastern West Virginia Panhandle, according to Kevin Rodriguez, chief meteorologist at the weather service office in Sterling, Virginia.

“It was a very busy night,” said Jeremy Geiger, a hydrologist with the National Weather Service. “It’s one of those things where all the right elements come together at the right time. So that’s always the question.”

Geiger said it wasn’t a high-energy storm system, but wind shear and other factors fueled it and created the rotation that allowed tornadoes to form. He said the system was particularly challenging because forecasters were issuing flash flood and tornado warnings simultaneously, advising some residents to move to high ground and others to take shelter in basements.

In Gaithersburg, Maryland, George Mhano told WJLA-TV that a crane might be needed to remove the tree from his house, so he will probably have to stay at a hotel. When the tornado hit, Mhano said he heard loud bangs and banging on the window, so he hid in the bathtub. Later, firefighters knocked and told him to get out, which he did.

“Thank God, I wasn’t hurt. And thank God, everybody back home was at church,” Mhanno told WJLA-TV. “It’s just stuff. It can be replaced or fixed. Nobody got hurt, so that’s what matters.”