MINNEAPOLIS — You would be hard-pressed to find anyone who isn't at least a tiny bit thankful for a storm system that dropped desperately-needed rain across parts of Minnesota Tuesday morning.
With the majority of the state experiencing severe to extreme drought, precipitation is needed to jump-start withering farm fields and lawns and refill lakes, rivers and aquifers that have dropped precipitously during our scorching summer. But Tuesday's rain brought with it lightning, thunder and high winds, which caused disruptions in a number of areas.
As of 10:30 a.m. Xcel Energy reported just over 14,500 customers were without electricity, most of them in the Twin Cities metro. Crews are working to restore power as soon as possible.
You can check the Xcel outage map for details.
There was minor damage reported from some areas, ranging from downed tree limbs to mangled yard equipment. Jill Longhenry shared these photos from Hugo... probably safe to say her children won't be jumping on their trampoline for a while, after high winds picked it up and wrapped it around the deck.
At Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport, Tuesday's storms triggered a Traffic Management Program to deal with the lightning and unstable conditions. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) says the program is triggered by "general airport conditions" and is "not flight specific," but says both departures and arrivals were impacted by the storms. Travelers are advised to check with the airline to see if their flight is impacted, but as of 9:30 a.m. flight traffic was back on track.
