Tornado warning hits Beltrami County, spotters report tornado near Debs
Spotters saw a tornado near Debs and Island Lake as a Beltrami County warning covered Tenstrike, Redby and Turtle River and reached 8,507 people.
Spotters reported a tornado on the ground near Debs and Island Lake as a tornado warning covered parts of Beltrami County until 9:45 p.m. CDT July 24. The warning zone included Tenstrike, Redby and Turtle River, along with southeastern Beltrami County and northeastern Clearwater County, and the National Weather Service in Grand Forks said the threat included an observed tornado and golf ball-sized hail.
The warning area covered about 8,507 people, four schools and no hospitals. Officials also tracked 1.75-inch hail and damage to a mobile home, a sign that the storm was not just a radar concern but a live threat to homes and vehicles in the county’s south and east.
Beltrami County had already been under a separate tornado warning earlier in the day, issued at 5:34 p.m. CDT for northeastern Beltrami County and set to expire at 6:15 p.m. The back-to-back warnings put a wide stretch of the county under severe weather alerts for much of the evening, with Debs and Island Lake emerging as the places where a tornado was actually confirmed by spotters.
When a tornado is reported on the ground, the next minutes matter. Residents in the warning zone should move immediately to the lowest interior room of a sturdy building, stay away from windows, and get out of mobile homes and vehicles for substantial shelter. The county’s emergency management office says Beltrami County now uses Everbridge for emergency notifications, a system meant to push urgent alerts faster when storms turn dangerous.
The July 24 warnings came after another hard stretch of weather for the county. In June 2025, Craig Gaasvig declared a State of Emergency after destructive severe thunderstorms with possible embedded tornadoes, and on June 27 county officials said the National Weather Service had confirmed an EF1 tornado near Fourtown on the evening of June 22 with maximum winds estimated at 95 mph. That recent damage made the Debs and Island Lake report more than a routine summer warning, since another confirmed tornado had already left Beltrami County dealing with the costs of severe weather.
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