Winds rip trees, power lines across NE Minn.

Fierce winds and fallen trees cut power to thousands of homes and businesses across northeast Minnesota from the Duluth area to the Canadian border.

Strong, sustained winds that began blowing across the Iron Range Sunday moved into the Duluth area Monday morning, wreaking havoc on power lines with gusts up to 45 miles per hour.

The biggest outages came in Duluth and International Falls, Minnesota, where more than 1,000 customers temporarily lost power Monday, Minnesota Power spokeswoman Amy Rutledge said. A fallen tree also cut power to the University of Minnesota Duluth campus this morning, but electricity there has since been restored.

"Trees are getting knocked into power lines, so that takes a bit of time to isolate the problem, and pull the trees off the lines and get the power restored," Rutledge said.

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More than 5,000 people have lost power since Sunday morning, although electricity has since been restored to many of those customers.

Utility crews working overnight have fixed many of the outages, but hundreds still remain without electricity. Wet, snowy ground is partly to blame, said Tami Zaun with Lake Country Power in Grand Rapids, Minnesota.

"When you get that soft ground, and then you also have these heavy winds, often times that's not a good recipe," Zaun said. "The two combined often leads to trees falling on to power lines and then you have people out of power."

A wind advisory remains in effect until 9 p.m. Monday night.