Storm's Aftermath: Fallen Trees Moved to Edina Lawns, Power Outages Persist

Edina is still limping after Friday night’s severe thunderstorm, with trees down around the city and Xcel Energy predicting some residents won’t regain power until Wednesday.

Police chief Jeff Long noted that it was a busy weekend for his department.

“Our call load over Friday night and Saturday tripled overnight with people calling with concerns about when’s power going to be on, arcing wires, tree branches down,” he said.

But Edina was relatively fortunate, with no major flooding and the total number of power outages numbering not in the thousands, like in St. Louis Park and Southwest Minneapolis, but in the hundreds.

“You go a mile or two to the east down by the lakes, and they got hit a lot harder than we did,”  Long said. “I wouldn’t say that we’re lucky, but it certainly wasn’t as bad as some of our neighboring communities.”

Downed branches and other debris left by the storm is the responsibility of Edina residents to clean up, said public works staffer Susan Waack. But residents can request assistance for public safety hazards at the city’s website.