Xcel Energy working to restore service in Twin Cities metro after severe storms
After Xcel Energy worked to restore power to a majority of customers who lost electricity during Sunday night's severe weather across Minnesota, Monday night's storms caused another spike in outages.
Sunday brought wind gusts over 60 mph, heavy rain, hail and lightning. Nearly 80,000 customers were impacted, with most outages concentrated in the Twin Cities metro area. As of Monday afternoon, around 70,000 customers had their power restored, Xcel said.
But early Tuesday, the company said more than 140,000 Minnesotans were without power. More than half of those outages occurred in the Twin Cities.
As of 9 p.m. on Tuesday, more than 10,000 customers are still without power.
Brandon Cramer, director of distribution operations for Xcel Energy, says this is the biggest power outage event of the year. He says about 700 crews, some from across the country, are working in the state.
"This one's a little bit larger scale than our typical event," Cramer said. "Overall, thousands of employees are contributing to the event."
Cramer says the strategy is to target outages that impact the most customers and go from there. Customers still out since Sunday get higher priority. He says most customers should be restored by Thursday night.
Crews are prioritizing larger outages first, but the company says the high number of smaller, scattered outages means some customers may be without power longer than others.
In New Hope, Lenore Brodney says she was preparing for a two-day outage but was surprised to find her power restored just before midday Monday.
"Kids and I were watching TV, just having our usual evening night, and all of a sudden the power flashed and then went off," Brodney said. "As soon as I got home, I got a bunch of notifications that my power was on ... so I'm very lucky that it came on quickly."
Eric Lundequam's Hopkins home got a double dose of severe weather.
"The wind was kind of aggressive. The lightning was kind of a fun show," Lundequam said.
On Monday night, those strong winds were too much for a 60-plus foot tree, which knocked out power to Lundequam and his neighbors' homes. While he has generator to help power his fridge for the time being, Lundequam's air conditioning will have to wait until the power should be back.
Xcel is urging customers to stay away from any downed or sagging power lines. Anyone who sees a line down is asked to stay back and call 1-800-895-1999 to report it.
For real-time updates, customers can check the Xcel Energy outage map.
Cramer says Xcel is focused on making the power grid as resilient to severe weather as possible. He says they do this by putting it underground when they can, and rebuilding and replacing infrastructure as needed.
Aside from some possible isolated showers or weak storms in southern Minnesota on Tuesday, the state will get a break from the rain for the next few days.