The winter weather we’ve endured this week in Southwest Michigan brought with it some eyebrow-raising wind gusts on Wednesday night and Thursday morning.

National Weather Service meteorologist Chris Roller told us Thursday high winds are common for the region in the fall, but they usually die down, for the most part, over the winter. We haven’t really seen that, especially on Wednesday night.

“One interesting aspect of last night’s system as it came in was Benton Harbor itself had a 61 mile per hour gust and the St. Joseph area at 56 and Waterville had a 45,” Roller said. “So that whole area was gusting well over the advisory type winds of 45 miles per hour and even surpassed like warning level winds.”

South Haven had a wind gust of 74 miles per hour recorded. Roller says Lake Michigan contributed.

When wind gusts start to top 45 miles per, there’s a danger to semi truck drivers because the trucks could be knocked right over.

Roller expects the lake effect snow and the wind gusts to taper off heading into Friday.