Three children died on Friday after their boat capsized in a severe storm on Geneva Lake, a popular tourist destination in southeastern Wisconsin, the authorities said.
The boat, which was carrying six adults and four children, was overwhelmed by strong winds and waves on the lake on Friday afternoon, the Lake Geneva Police Department said in a statement.
“A sudden and severe storm moved across the area, rapidly producing hazardous boating conditions,” the statement said.
Officials confirmed that all four children were wearing life jackets at the time.
The boat capsized and sank. Emergency responders rescued the adults and one child.
After an intensive search, “the three missing children were located and recovered from the lake,” the statement said.
Lifesaving measures were performed but all three were later pronounced dead.
Tom Hausner, the Walworth County undersheriff, said at a news conference on Friday that the deaths remain under investigation.
The authorities did not immediately release the identities or ages of the children who died.
Undersheriff Hausner said the storm hit around 12:10 p.m., and that’s when 911 calls began to come in alerting the authorities to the boat accident.
Geneva Lake is an elongated lake in southern Wisconsin, about 43 miles southwest of Milwaukee. The city of Lake Geneva, a resort town and popular weekend destination, sits at its eastern end.
Forecasters had warned of the potential for severe thunderstorms across much of the eastern half of the United States on Friday.
The storms were moving along the northwestern edge of the high pressure system, often called a heat dome, that has been responsible for the brutally high temperatures across much of the country this week.
These types of storms can cause hail and even tornadoes, but it was the risk of damaging wind gusts that forecasters were most concerned about as the storms moved east on Friday.
A squall line of thunderstorms moved across Northern Illinois and southern Wisconsin on Friday morning into the early afternoon, with reports of wind gusts reaching 50 and 60 miles per hour, along with snapped trees and downed utility poles.
The storms swept across Geneva Lake, moving from the southwest to northeast, in the early afternoon and had moved out of the area by 12:40 p.m., according to John Gagan, a meteorologist at the Weather Service office in Dousman, Wis.
Winds in the area could have reached up to 80 m.p.h., according to one Weather Service estimate.
Emmett Lindner contributed reporting.