Parts of Golden Valley Still Without Power

Golden Valley residents are among the nearly 9,000 still without power, nearly 24 hours after a tornado and lightning storm ripped through the Twin Cities west metro.

About 26,000 Xcel Energy customers lost power Sunday. A swath of homes stretching from Fridley and Brooklyn Center to the eastern slice of Golden Valley and St. Louis Park are still without electricity. Xcel Energy crews have been working around the clock since Sunday's mid-afternoon storms to restore power.

The tornado "completely destroyed our distribution center," according to Xcel Energy spokesman.  In some areas, high winds knocked trees into overhead lines and poles. Crews are replacing poles and stringing new conductor lines, and officials expect to have power back throughout the metro by 11 p.m. today.

"Access is the main sticking point right now," said Tom Hoen, a spokesman with Xcel Energy. "There's just a lot of debris, a lot of wood to cut through, and we just need to get through it all to do the work."