Thousands Without Power in St. Louis Park After Thunderstorm

Xcel Energy is reporting that thousands of people in the St. Louis Park area are without power following the high winds and heavy rain Friday evening.

The largest outage was 3,312 customers near Hwy 7 and Louisiana, and many people are not expected to regain power until Monday at noon. Across the Twin Cities, 276,000 are without power.

Online, many residents were talking about the power outages and fallen trees. 

"Minnesota weather is your high school drama queen," tweeted Eric Le from St. Louis Park.

Xcel released the following statement 10:30 p.m. Friday:

Starting at about 7:00 p.m. a severe storm system producing heavy rain, punishing winds, lightening and hail came through the Twin Cities metro area.  This resulted in significant damage to our distribution infrastructure throughout the Metro West, and Metro East Service Territory.  The total number of customers impacted thus far in this new event is estimated at 250,000.  We expect the total number of customers impacted and job count to rise well into the morning hours and are making aggressive changes to the number of crews; and support functions of Distribution Operations.  

The operational team met tonight to re-prioritize crew deployment.  An early morning operations call is scheduled to further coordinate this large restoration effort ahead.

With the extent of the damage this will be a significant multi-day event.  

We are currently in an assessment mode and have not yet determined the new estimated. restoration time.