The storm that swept through a Missouri vacation town – and ultimately caused a duck boat to capsize, killing at least 13 tourists – was…
The storm that swept through a Missouri vacation town – and ultimately caused a duck boat to capsize, killing at least 13 tourists – was so ferocious, it resembled a tornado, according to a shaken eyewitness.
“I looked out the window and everything was fine. Then it turned dark and the wind kicked up like I’ve never seen before,” Stephanie Kettells, the co-owner of Lakeside Resort Restaurant and General Store on Table Rock Lake, told the Springfield News-Leade r. “I thought it was tornadic winds.”
Kettells said her son and husband were down on the docks Thursday, where their boats were “coming up head level because of the waves.”
“It was crazy,” she said. “It was like the ocean out there. We’ve been here 12 years and I’ve never seen anything like it.”
Officials said the storm likely caused a Ride the Ducks boat to flip over and sink around 8 p.m. Among the dead are children, authorities said.
Divers resumed searching the southwest Missouri Lake for four who remained missing Friday.
The sudden weather was worrisome to veteran boater Brandon Hite, who was fishing with his 14-year-old daughter Danielle near the Cape Fair Boat Dock & Marina when the skies darkened.
“By the time we got out of the cove, it had already got dark up there,” he said. “I looked up to the north and I said ‘What is that there?’ It looked like dust but it was white. It was like a nest.”
As the winds began whipping the waters, Hite carefully drove his 26-foot boat toward the marina to safety.
“My whole goal was to keep the nose of the boat (pointed) in the wind because if I went sideways, we would have capsized,” he said. “It was definitely scary.”
He said his frightened daughter laid down in the boat and held on to stop herself from falling out.
“I told her ‘I do not know the outcome of this,’” Hite said. “I’d never had anything come upon us like this.
