Thunderstorm Wind — Goodhue, Minnesota

2016-06-10 · near Red Wing, Goodhue, Minnesota

Event narrative

Numerous trees were blown down between Red Wing and Wacouta. An individual was injured during this storm from a fallen tree that landed on a detached garage, and trapped him as the garage collapsed.

Wider weather episode

An outflow boundary from previous morning thunderstorms across western Minnesota, ignited a broken line of severe thunderstorms southwest of New Ulm, to northwest of Mankato, Friday afternoon, June 10th.

Clusters of storms moved east-northeast toward St. Peter, Faribault, Northfield and Red Wing, and produced numerous reports of downed trees and power lines.

One of the worst counties affected by these storms was Goodhue, which had three distinct severe storms move across the county from 2:30 PM CST to 4:00 PM CST. The city of Bellechester, and Hay Creek, Belvidere, and Goodhue Townships were most affected by the severe storms. The first storm affected mainly the far northeast part of the county between Red Wing and Wacouta. The second moved across the southern part of the county with a few downed trees noted. The third moved across far southern Goodhue county and produced the most damage near Bellechester.

During the height of the storm, the Minnesota Valley Electric Cooperative (MVEC) had several thousand people without power around Le Center, Montgomery and Lexington in central Le Sueur county. Xcel Energy initially had 30,000 without power, and had a crew of 150 members working on the outages during the height of the storm.

These storms also moved into west central Wisconsin where additional reports of downed trees and power lines were noted.

There were several weather sensors across southern Minnesota that reported wind gusts of 40 to 55 mph, and two that measured above severe limits. The highest measured wind gust (Minnesota Department of Transportation Wind Sensor) was south of Cannon Falls, on Highway 52, which had a gust of 75 mph.

There was an outflow boundary ahead of the main thunderstorm complex that caused a few high wind gusts above 55 mph. One of the wind gusts occurred at the Waseca airport which measured a gust of 51 knots. A local cemetery had damage that was associated with the strong winds.

View location on OpenStreetMap → (44.5626, -92.5646)

Source: NOAA Storm Events Database, event_id 628758. Narrative written by the NWS forecast office that issued the report.