Damage, power outages in Minnesota after severe storms

Tens of thousands of Minnesota homes and businesses remained without power Tuesday, after severe storms rolled across the state for a second consecutive night.

The storms late Monday brought hurricane-force winds to parts of the state — with numerous reports of trees and power lines down from central Minnesota, through the Twin Cities and toward Rochester and Winona.

As of early Tuesday, Xcel Energy was reporting about 80,000 of its Minnesota customers without power.

Smaller utilities also reported significant outages. Minnesota Valley Electric Cooperative reported about 1,000 customers without power as of sunrise Tuesday — down from more than 7,000 in the immediate wake of the storms.

“It’s going to be a long night, overnight and Tuesday for our crews,” MVEC reported in an update late Monday. “While we wish we could reach every outage at once, restoration takes time. Our priority is to restore power to the greatest number of members as quickly and safely as possible, starting with the largest outages and then working our way down, or sometimes moving to the next closest outage location.”

The National Weather Service reported wind gusts of 74 mph at Kasson, 70 mph near Owatonna, 68 mph near Lake City and 65 mph in Shakopee. There were widespread reports of large trees and branches downed by the storms.

The storms also brought more heavy rain and flooding to Stevens County in western Minnesota, following flash flooding over the weekend.

Western Wisconsin also saw some storm damage Monday night, as did Iowa — where the storms produced winds of nearly 100 mph.