Strong thunderstorms knocked out power to thousands of homes and businesses across central and southern Minnesota early Monday.
As of 6:45 a.m., Xcel Energy was reporting outages affecting nearly 13,000 of its Minnesota customers. That number was down to about 5,800 an hour later.
Weather spotters in Rochester reported trees downed by storms. Rochester Public Utilities said its crews were responding to outages affecting hundreds of customers across the city.
BENCO Electric Cooperative, East Central Energy, Federated Rural Electric, Minnesota Valley Electric Cooperative and Steele Waseca Cooperative Electric also each reported several hundred of their customers without power.
Utility crews were also working to repair outages affecting several thousand homes and businesses in the Sioux Falls area of eastern South Dakota.
Those outages were prompted by a line of storms that produced a wind gust of 73 mph near Rushmore in southwest Minnesota. The National Weather Service also reported gusts of 67 mph near Fairmont and 63 mph near Trimont.
There were several severe thunderstorm warnings across far southern Minnesota during the early morning hours.
In addition to strong winds, the storms were bringing very heavy rain to central and southern Minnesota — with much more on the way over the coming days.
A flood watch is in effect for much of the region, and the Weather Service said the rounds of heavy rain could add up to 3 to 6 inches over the next week.
That could lead to flash flooding as well as river flooding.
Moderate to major flooding is forecast along the South Fork Crow River west of the Twin Cities. Carver County has closed County Highway 123 between Watertown and Mayer due to rising water levels.