Storms cut off power, disrupt the State Fair again and threaten tornadoes

Another powerful storm late Thursday afternoon sent tens of thousands of metro area residents back into the dark, disrupted the Minnesota State Fair and even brought with it a brief tornado touchdown in Isanti County.

For the third time this week, a storm packing heavy rain and 60 mph winds passed through the Twin Cities area and left nearly 35,000 customers without power as of 5:30 p.m., according to Xcel Energy.

Unlike the two storms Monday evening and early Tuesday morning, Thursday’s included a confirmed tornado that briefly touched down in a rural area about four miles east of Isanti, according to Clinton Maxson, the Isanti County emergency manager. He said no injuries or damage, other than downed tree limbs, has been reported.

“Nothing like Tuesday, for sure,” Maxson said of the wind damage.

KMSP Fox 9 posted video Thursday evening of what it called a “waterspout tornado” taking shape over Bde Maka Ska in south Minneapolis. The 30-second clip shows the wind lifting water from the lake in a circular pattern.

According to the Fox 9 website, meteorologist Ian Leonard confirmed that a waterspout was forming, and the “Bring Me the News” website quotes meteorologist Sven Sundgaard as saying the video shows what looks to be an attempted water spout. The video reportedly was taken from a balcony overlooking the lake.

At the State Fair, officials closed admissions shortly before 5 p.m. and reopened the gates less than an hour later. Some attractions were to remain closed until further notice, but the Mötley Crüe concert at the grandstand was set to begin as scheduled at 7 p.m.

It’s the third time this week that weather has disrupted fair operations. Admissions were forced to shut down early Monday evening and open late Tuesday as a result of heavy rainfall and storm damage. The steamy weather and storm threats on Monday resulted in the lowest daily attendance of the week at 80,500, about 54,000 fewer fairgoers than the day before. About 125,000 visited the fair on Tuesday.

The National Weather Service reported that Thursday’s storm uprooted trees and brought down poles in Anoka, Albertville, Victoria and Ramsey. A truck and camper were overturned in Bethel, blocking a roadway.

Tornado warnings had been issued late Thursday afternoon for northern parts of the Twin Cities metro area and east-central Minnesota. Another tornado warning was issued for northwest Mille Lacs County and southeastern Morrison County, after a storm capable of producing a tornado was spotted seven miles east of Little Falls.

Storms earlier in the week with high gusts knocked out power for more than 140,000 people in the metro area, according to Xcel Energy.

Elsewhere in the state, large hail and a few tornadoes were also possible as supercells developed along a cold front across Minnesota starting Thursday afternoon, according to the Storm Prediction Center. The center placed an area stretching from north of Brainerd to the Iowa border under a slight risk for severe weather, meaning about a 40% chance of strong storms.

Cities included in the advisory were Minneapolis, St. Paul, Alexandria, Mora, St. Cloud, Redwood Falls, Red Wing, Mankato, Owatonna, Austin, Albert Lea, Worthington and Rochester. The advisory also included western Wisconsin, the Storm Prediction Center said.

The threat of more severe weather came as Xcel Energy worked to get back online the last of its customers who lost power during the Monday and Tuesday storms. As of Thursday afternoon, about 8,500 customers in the Twin Cities remained in the dark, the utility reported. The largest number of outages were in Minneapolis (6,150) and St. Paul, where 1,380 customers still did not have power, according to the utility’s online outage map. Lacking power, Como Park High School called off its parent/student open house Thursday evening.

Those customers without power were expected to have service restored by Thursday evening, said Xcel Energy spokesman Theo Keith.

In the past 48 hours, more than 250,000 addresses across the metro area lost power, but 95% of those have had it restored. Over the past two days, about 1,800 workers have replaced the equivalent of 14 miles of wire and more than 250 power poles, Keith said.

A long dry period is on tap, according to the Weather Service. Sunny skies will prevail Friday through Wednesday, and weather through the Labor Day weekend will be cooler with highs falling from the 80s Saturday into the low 70s Sunday and Monday.