Weather news: State of emergency and Tropical Storm Lee

Remember all the damage from Saturday's storm in Ferndale and neighboring communities? The damage was bad enough that the Detroit Free Press reported the day before yesterday that Ferndale, Hazel Park, Pleasant Ridge declare storm-damage emergency.

In the wake of Saturday’s high winds and extensive damage to trees and power lines, officials in Ferndale, Hazel Park and Pleasant Ridge said they met with Oakland County emergency response officials today prior to declaring their cities in a state of emergency.

The declarations are a step toward applying for up to $30,000 in emergency aid from the state to defray the costs of storm clean-ups, Ferndale City Manager April McGrath said.

As if that wasn't bad enough, the remnants of Tropical Storm Lee passed by here last night. My wife and I took a good look at the NOAA and Intellicast radars and saw a band of heavy rain passing by from east to west over our heads. When we watched the MSNBC morning news, we saw a clip of Lee from space that showed the storm heading west after hitting Pennsylvania and upstate New York. The storm is moving so far west that the meteorologists in Milwaukee are blogging about it coming there, remarking that 'the weather is moving backwards.' They're right. It is.

The local take on the storm was Will you get wet at the Michigan-Notre Dame game Saturday? Fortunately, the answer is probably no, although it would just figure, as both teams had their games interrupted last weekend by bad weather.