Five Lake Lida homes destroyed by tornado

No one was injured

By Susan Larson , | The Daily JournalBob Williams | The Daily Journal

Originally published 01:30 p.m., June 7, 2007
Updated 08:57 p.m., June 7, 2007

Sharon Thompson had just gotten home from Chicago Thursday afternoon when her neighbors came over to get in her basement.

A few minutes later, a tornado had taken the roof off her Lake Lida home, shattered her windows and left the place in shambles.

“It’s really hard,” Thompson said. “You see other people going through this. You think it would never happen to you. But it’s a blessing that nobody was hurt.”

The tornado blistered through Richland, Wilkin and Otter Tail County about 2 p.m. Thursday afternoon, first hitting the Elizabeth area, located northwest of Fergus Falls, before moving north and touching down north of Pelican Rapids.

Thompson’s 60-year-old lake home was one of five along Lake Lida’s north shore that had sustained severe damage, according to the Otter Tail County Sheriff’s Department. Another 20 homes received light to moderate damage. About a dozen pontoons were partially damaged, and several boats were still missing.

Through her basement window, Thompson and her neighbors saw a pontoon flying out of the water, but did not know until after the tornado had passed that her roof had come off. One of her friends was stuck in the bathroom, she said, because she couldn’t get to the stairs due to the amount of debris flying around the home. The woman was not injured.

“My husband was pulling some lawn furniture off of our deck, when all of a sudden a black cloud came out right in front of us,” said Claudia Boelter, who took cover in a neighbor’s house along Lake Lida. “We ran next door and I looked out their living room window. I could see this cloud that was down on the lake — rotating and pulling water up.”

Bruce Norman got a closer look at a tornado Thursday then he ever hoped to. A truck driver for Riley Brothers Construction, he was working in a small gravel pit north of Elizabeth around 1:45 p.m. when a funnel touched down less than a quarter-mile in front of him.

“It looked like a whirlwind at first,” he said. “It was just a big ball of twisting dirt, then I saw the funnel form. The base was about 150-feet wide and it got bigger and bigger.”

There were two other people at the scene with Norman and other trucks enroute to the pit.

“I got on the radio and told everyone to get out of there. We drove away from it. I know you’re not supposed to do that, but we had nowhere else to go. There was a hole in the ground, but we would have had to drive through the tornado to get to it.”

They left the pit, heading south on Highway 59, driving about a half-mile just outside of Elizabeth.

“Then we stopped and got out to watch it. It went up over a hill, over a farmstead through some trees and then it just disappeared … It’s an awakening when you see that. I’ve seen funnel clouds before, but never that up close and personal.”

Funnel clouds were also spotted in central Wilkin County, but no damage was reported.

The National Weather Service issued numerous severe thunderstorms warnings for the state Thursday, from the southwest to the northeast corners of the state. Winds gusted as high as 70 mph in some places.

In the Wahpeton-Breckenridge area on the North Dakota-Minnesota border, a strong thunderstorm dumped between 2 1/2-3 inches of rain in 90 minutes, leaving several streets in both towns under water.

Approximately 400 Lake Region Electric (LRE) customers were without power Thursday, said Bard Miller, Lake Region Electric vice president of operations.

“The worst area was the Clay Point/Lida Shores area,” he said. “Most of our efforts were concentrated there. It hit around 1:30 p.m. and by 7 p.m. all of the poles and wires were up and service was restored to everyone who could receive it. Some we couldn’t get running yet becaue (the customers) have to replace the meter sockets. Of course, those who had there cabins destroyed, we can’t help them.”

LRE replaced a half-dozen poles. Trees and downed power lines made it a challenge, Miller said.

Joel Myhre, Erin Schlueter, Bob Williams and Susan M.A. Larson contributed to this report.