ST. LOUIS PARK, Minn. — Overnight storms hit the Twin Cities hard, knocking out power for tens of thousands of people.
“We saw about 135,000 customers with outages. We’re approaching about two-thirds of those restored right now,” said Regional Vice President of Xcel Energy John Marshall. “Of all the storms this is probably our first big one that impacted most customers here in this region.”
He said the west metro got hit the hardest and storms came a little bit out of the blue.
“We should have all customers, mostly all customers restored by the end of day tomorrow, Monday,” he said. “We got about 1,250 crews, linemen, and support staff [working to restore power].”
Marshall said the heat makes things more challenging.
“Today’s toughness is the weather conditions. It’s hot, it’s humid, it’s dangerous,” Marshall said. “We do want to get our customers restored as fast as possible.”
Anthony Alwin’s power was touch and go.
“My power went out for a second and then, and then it came back on,” he said.
Alwin lives in St. Louis Park near Wolfe Park. He says his power is back on now, but his internet isn’t working.
He said this is the most storm damage he has seen in eight years.
“Mother nature is not always nice,” Alwin said.
Jake Mazanec walks his dog through Wolfe Park all the time.
“We like to go on these paths, and so our route had to change because some of these trees are down,” he said.
Mazanec said he heard the wind last night but was shocked to see how much damage it caused.
“First thing I see is just branches everywhere,” he said. “It hasn’t been like this before.”
Gus Whittington and Emily Andrews drove from Northeast to play at the pickleball courts in St. Louis Park. They said they didn’t see much damage in their neighborhood, and they were shocked to see so much damage 15 minutes away.
“It’s a holy crap moment. The fallen trees and debris, and we didn’t realize that it had been that bad,” Whittington said.
“Yeah, we didn’t realize it had been this severe in other parts of the city,” Andrews said.