2026-09-24 · Detroit Lakes / Big Floyd Lake (Becker County) — Oakland Beach & Floyd Point
The Tornado Left the Lake Full of Shingles — So Neighbors Put on Snorkels
After an EF-2 tornado ripped the west side of Floyd Lake on July 6, 2026, Pelican River Watershed District staff and volunteers kept diving Thursdays into fall — pulling shingles, glass, boat windshields, and dock scrap from the swim zone so the fishery and the shoreline folks can get their quiet lake back.
Some Minnesota fishing stories are about a pontoon full of sunnies. This one is about a pontoon full of wet roofing, a boat windshield that used to belong to somebody’s summer, and people who decided the bottom of Floyd Lake was not going to stay that way.
On July 6, 2026, an EF-2 tornado tore the west side of Floyd Lake north of Detroit Lakes — National Weather Service estimates put winds around 115 mph, and Becker County reporting described a path nearly seven miles long and about 800 yards wide, with three people hurt. Shoreline cleanup moved fast. The part that kept hanging around was underwater: shingles, piles of glass, boat parts, dock pieces, the whole “your cabin just got rearranged by the sky” inventory sitting in four to six feet of water, right where kids swim and anglers wade. (Detroit Lakes Tribune; InForum / WDAY, Aug. 6, 2026; Lakes Area Radio / KDLM, Aug. 24, 2026)
Becker County asked the Pelican River Watershed District to lead the lake recovery. Interim director Shanna Rix-Bach (also covered as Shanna Bach) has been scuba diving the mess herself while Water Resource Coordinator Josh Beranek runs the boat. Volunteers — including lake residents who got hit and neighbors who just showed up — work Thursdays with pontoons and scuba gear. By late August they had finished a pass along Oakland Beach, the hardest-hit stretch, and were shifting toward Floyd Point, where the tornado left the lake. Bach told KDLM they planned to keep going every Thursday until the water got too cold. The district’s public cleanup page was still posting fresh maps into mid-September. (Lakes Area Radio; PRWD Big Floyd Lake Cleanup 2026; Detroit Lakes Tribune / Becker County update)
A lot of what they’re after does not wave at you from the surface. Shingles look like a dark patch in the weeds until somebody with a mask and gloves pulls one up and sees the white product print. Glass shows up in piles. Bach’s line for the whole scene was clean: “It was kind of like one giant litter event that nobody wanted and nobody asked for.” Colton Appel of the watershed district put the motive simpler — you feel the need, so you go help. The district’s own guide even draws a fishing line through the work: leave downed branches more than three feet under, because that wood is fish habitat; pull the nails-and-tin trash; then clean the boat hard, because Floyd’s zebra mussels hitchhike on whatever you haul. (InForum; PRWD cleanup guide)
Campfire takeaway: Detroit Lakes Country did not wait for a bite chart to decide the lake was worth saving. Staff and neighbors kept snorkeling a tornado’s leftovers out of the swim zone so the next cast — and the next kid who jumps off a dock — is not stepping on somebody’s roof. Floyd Lake is still a fishing lake. The volunteers just had to dig the storm out of it first.