Stormy weather brings hail to western Twin Cities suburbs

Storm clouds
Storm clouds move in over the Twin Cities last weekend.
MPR Photo/Elizabeth Stawicki

Hail pelted the southwestern suburbs of the Twin Cities as severe thunderstorms rumbled over the Twin Cities area on Thursday afternoon.

Spotters reported 1.25-inch hail in Plymouth. One-inch hail was reported in Chaska, Waconia and Minnetonka.

Flight departures and arrivals at Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport were temporarily delayed by an hour or more as a heavy cell passed over the airport.

Hail
Hail on the deck of Don Householder, who lives in Mound, Minn.
Photo by Don Householder

The stormy weather prompted a medical helicopter to make an emergency landing in a field at Theodore Wirth Park in Minneapolis.

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The Lifelink helicopter had just dropped off a patient at Children's Hospital in St. Paul and was heading back to Flying Cloud Airport in Eden Prairie when the crew decided the weather was too much of a threat, Lifelink spokeswoman Kristen Brand said. They put down in the park on the west side of Minneapolis and took off again about a half-hour later after conditions improved. Nobody was injured and there were no patients on board.

Lightning strikes caused fires at three houses in Plymouth, but none sustained serious damage, police said.

About 3,400 homes in St. Cloud lost power because of the storms Thursday evening, Xcel Energy reported, but there were no significant outages in the Twin Cities area.

In southwestern Minnesota, the National Weather Service reported 3 inches of rain in an hour and 4.5 inches through the afternoon in Windom, 65 mph winds and 2.5-inch in Ellsworth. and 1.75-inch hail in Adrian and Wilmont earlier Thursday afternoon. Flash flooding was reported on Kanaranzi Creek near Rushmore, the Rock River near Hardwick and Pipestone Creek at Pipestone.

Forecasters said more severe thunderstorms and additional heavy rains were possible Thursday night, and a tornado watch was out for much of the southern third of the state, including the southern Twin Cities area, into the early hours Friday.

The threat of bad weather led some metro area schools to move graduation ceremonies indoors, and several games in the state high school softball tournament in North Mankato had to be postponed due to rain, while the second day of the Class A boys' state golf tournament in Becker was canceled.

Thursday's storms came five days after a round of hailstorms did extensive damage to vehicles, homes and gardens across the Twin Cities, particularly in the western suburbs.