Power Restored in Mendota Heights

Updated Wednesday, 12 midnight: Xcel projected they would have nearly all power restored to customers by 11 p.m. Wednesday night, and it looks like they met their goal. The outage map late Wednesday reports no customers waiting for power to be restored in the Mendota Heights area. 

Updated Wednesday, 12:45 p.m.: Xcel reports 2,700 customers remain without power on Wednesday afternoon. That's down from a high of 104,000 estimated customers mid-day Tuesday. The utility continues to report that most customers will have power back by 11 p.m. tonight. 

Xcel has brought in crews from surrounding states to double its force in the wake of Tuesday morning's storms, according to KSTP.

Updated Wednesday, 11 a.m.: The lights went out for many in northern Dakota County during Tuesday morning's storm.

About 4,000 customers, meaning households, are without power late Wednesday morning.

Unusual numbers of downed power and phone lines caused by  are to blame. 

Power outages were reported at a variety of locales around town including , where basketball camp was canceled. St. Thomas Academy has power as of Wednesday morning. At , power was restored around 11 a.m. Tuesday and shopowners opened for business.

West St. Paul and Mendota Heights neighborhoods north of Marie Avenue are showing the deepest concentration of outages. 

Xcel Energy posted this updated message on their outage map Tuesday evening:

Severe thunderstorms that moved through the Minneapolis metro area early this morning caused significant damage to our electric system. Throughout the event, about 104,000 customers were impacted. Currently, about 14,000 customers remain without power. We are expecting the vast majority of customers to be restored by 11 p.m., Wednesday, June 20. Additional severe weather is expected later today and may cause restoration estimates to change.

The number of customers affected rose from an estimate of about 80,000 earlier in the day. The projected time of restoration has remained the same, but it may be impacted by any additional thunderstorms on Wednesday.

Xcel has brought in crews from surrounding states to double its force in the wake of the damage, according to KSTP.

Is power out at your business or residence? Did you fire up the laptop batteries to read this or leave your home this morning in darkness? Report your location and any other storm damage in the comments. Also, be sure to share when power comes back on.

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