Southern Beltrami Co. Hit Hard by Storms, Power Outages in Metro

Emergency managers say severe storms in southern Beltrami County have knocked down thousands of trees and caused extensive damage to utility lines.
    
County sheriff's officials are urging residents not to travel because of the number of roads covered by trees entangled with power lines. Thousands of customers are without power in and around Bemidji.
    
The county's emergency management assistant director, Christopher Muller, says utility crews are working on more than 100 spots where power lines are down and it may take well over 24 hours to restore service.
    
Muller says outdoor warning sirens were sounded in Bemidji about 6:30 p.m. Monday. Several citizens reported seeing a funnel cloud southwest of Bemidji. But, trained weather spotters and the National Weather Service did not confirm any tornadic activity. No one has been injured.

On Tuesday morning, 15,000 people across the Twin Cities metro were reportedly without power. As of about 10 a.m. power has been restored to some residents. Xcel energy says about 6,000 people are still without power. Crews will work through the day to restore outages.

So far, we are not hearing of many damage reports in the metro, but it’s a different story in northern Minnesota.

People in Bemidji woke up under a curfew this morning; the curfew started at 11 p.m. Monday and ended at 6 a.m. Tuesday.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.