Suspected tornado devastates Clamshell Beach Resort area (2024)

PEQUOT LAKES — A team from the National Weather Service in Duluth is still researching the damage in the lakes area on June 12, 2024, but video evidence suggests a likelihood of a tornado east of Jenkins and Pequot Lakes.

"(A survey team) is going to be heading there this afternoon to take a look at the damage to officially confirm a tornado," Patrick Ayd, meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Duluth, said Thursday. "If they confirm it's a tornado, we'll assign a rating. Based on reports from last night and some video, it looks like there was a tornado. They're just going to go there to confirm that based on damage, and based on the damage they will assign a rating."

Possible funnel cloud formations were photographed by people in the Jenkins area just before 7 p.m. Wednesday, when community Facebook pages began reporting possible tornado touchdowns at Clamshell Beach Resort and along County Road 16 in Ideal Township traveling east.

Though suspicious, low, funnel-shaped clouds were photographed in the area of the AmericInn in Jenkins, workers and visitors to the business were spared any extreme weather.

"Everything was fine," said General Manager Rebecca Mesenbrink. "We were lucky, I guess."

Mesenbrink said they would have been well prepared if the weather had turned sour, as the entire facility is a sturdy concrete structure with the exception of the pool room. All guests would have been directed, according to procedures, to the interior, first floor.

However, it never came to that. The gardens out front didn't even suffer the hail damage reported by much of the area.

Not far down County Road 16 at Clamshell Beach Resort, however, employees witnessed the devastating effects of the likely twister.

"Gwen and I were here in the lodge and our phones started beeping with alerts," Lodge Manager Krista Fevold said. "We immediately heard tornado sirens and thought we should hightail it to a basem*nt. We ran across to Bertha, one of our units with a basem*nt, and we barely made it. A tree came down just moments after we passed it, and we got pelted by hail on the way there, but we were very lucky. I can't even describe the noise. People describe it like a train, but it wasn't like that. I can't even describe what it sounded like. It wasn't like anything I've ever heard."

Outside, the winds flipped a pontoon and trees fell all over the resort, damaging cabins, destroying signs, a sea wall and a vehicle in one of the parking lots.

"We think a tornado came through," said Erica Meitz, with operations and maintenance at Clamshell Beach Resort. "Our awesome staff Krista and Gwen were on site and they had to take shelter. We were very blessed that nobody was hurt. We think we've lost about 80% of our trees and we have cabin damage on several cabins, but overall we feel pretty blessed."

"There is a lot of damage, but nobody was hurt, so that's the most important thing," Fevold said.

Travis Grimler / Echo Journal

Staff and guests were directed to seek shelter in safe areas, often basem*nts in designated cabins, once the sirens began going off. The weather change, however, was almost without warning.

The resort has canceled reservations for a limited time to allow crews to clean up fallen trees and repair property damage.

"For this week we're canceling reservations," Meitz said. "We will reconvene toward the end of the week, but for now we're focused on getting everything cleaned up to make it safe for our guests to come back and enjoy."

Campgrounds and private property near Breezy Point suffered similar damage, according to witnesses. While many areas were spared the worst of the wind, large hailstones and lesser winds did ravage a wider swath of lakes area.

"Regarding hail, we had numerous reports from the Backus area and through the Crosslake area and then down towards east Crosby," Ayd said. "There were numerous reports of golf ball to just shy of tennis ball size hail in the Backus area through Crosslake and then a bit east of Crosby, and also wind damage reports to a lot of boats and docks as well as trees down along that path."

Travis Grimler / Echo Journal

Ayd said the weather service will provide its updates on the classification of the possible tornado on social media and on weather.gov/duluth.

It is possible that severe thunderstorms and possibly other extreme weather could be on the horizon.

"It looks like we could be getting back into an active thunderstorm pattern," Ayd said. "It looks as we move into later this weekend and into next week, especially Saturday afternoon and evening and then into the middle of next week, we're expecting multiple rounds of thunderstorms and increasing humidity. It'll be much more like summer out there. With that, there's also signs of possible thunderstorms."