Soggy weather -- More rain hits state

Our dry May has suddenly turned soggy, and another round of storms will bring more rain and the potential for low-level flooding on streets and along rivers and creeks to the Twin Cities and southern and western Minnesota today, the National Weather Service said.

A large area of showers and thunderstorms moving into Minnesota from Iowa and Nebraska will bring steady rain throughout the morning and into the afternoon, said Karen Trammell, a forecaster for the National Weather Service in Chanhassen.

The Weather Service has issued a flash flood watch until 4 p.m. today for Le Sueur, Rice, Goodhue, Watonwan, Blue Earth, Waseca, Steele and Martin counties in south central Minnesota. More than 2 to 3 inches of rain could fall in the watch area on top of the 1 to 2 inches of rain that fell Wednesday, the weather service said.

In Plymouth, about 1,000 trees were damaged or uprooted on public land, and an unknown number on private property in Wednesday's storm. The city said today it is extending the hours of its yard waste site, where residents should take tree and brush waste, keeping gates open from 9 a.m. to 8 p.m. today through Monday.

Wet roads had little impact on today's morning rush hour in the Twin Cities, said Tom Heininger of the Regional Transportation Management Center in Roseville.

The rain is helping wipe out a precipitation deficit for the month.

Until Wednesday, the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport was more than 1.5 inches below average for the month. As of 7 p.m. Wednesday, the airport had recorded .15 inches, but official totals will not be availabe until later this morning, Trammell said.

The storms dropped more than an inch of rain in several places, including 1.20 inches at the St. Paul Downtown Airport, 1.19 inches in Forest Lake, 1.17 inches in Lino Lakes, 1.01 inches in Stillwater, 1.28 inches in Fridley, 1.53 inches in Zumbrota, Minn. and 1.74 inches in Faribault. More than 2 inches fell in Baldwin, Wis., the weather service said.

As much as one-half inch of rain could pelt the area today, the weather service said.

Today's high temperature will be about 61, with a west northwest wind between 5 and 15 miles per hour.

After today's rain, more wet weather is ahead, Trammell said. Showers and a few thunderstorms are forecast for Friday night into Saturday, but nothing severe is expected. Sunday and Monday should be dry before more rain moves in Monday night into Tuesday.

Western Wisconsin is looking at severe thunderstorms with the risk of hail and damaging winds later today.

On Wednesday, storms bringing strong winds and heavy winds blew through the metro area.

It was sometime after Wednesday's tornado warning, the downpour and then the shock of being trapped in a minivan covered with construction-trailer debris that the thought came back to Lori Comp:

"Maybe I should've stopped and gotten a sandwich."

The North Branch woman had decided to forgo the sandwich after leaving a Plymouth medical office building in hopes of beating the storm home.

The sky was white with rain and Comp was stopped at Hwy. 55 and Northwest Blvd. in Plymouth when the trailer blew on top of the van. A construction worker who'd been in the trailer helped pull her to safety.

Those who may have forgotten about severe spring weather got a rude reminder Wednesday as heavy rains, high winds and large hail caused minor damage across south-central and east-central Minnesota and western Wisconsin.

A rerun is expected today, with a heightened risk of flooding across southern Minnesota.

Classes were cancelled today at Oakwood Elementary School in Plymouth after a downed power line knocked out electricity to the kindergarten-grade 5 school and other homes and businesses in the area.

Oakwood is in the Wayzata School District, and district communications director Bob Noyed said Xcel Energy Corp. indicated that power wouldn't be restored at the school until sometime this afternoon.

Lots of bark, little bite

The storms, which rolled into the Twin Cities from South Dakota and southwestern Minnesota, essentially had a lot of bark but not so much bite.

The storms resulted from a cold front moving slowly across the central United States into warm air. The precipitation-causing clash raised the level of moisture in the air to 200 percent of what would be normal for this time of year, said Rick Hiltbrand, lead forecaster for the National Weather Service.

Sirens sounded in Hennepin and Anoka counties at midafternoon Wednesday after the Weather Service issued a tornado warning, but it appears that Minnesota's first tornado of 2007 may have been a weak dusty funnel cloud reported several hours later in Goodhue County.

Weather Service officials were expected to tour the Plymouth and Osseo areas today to determine whether damage there was caused by straight-line winds or a tornado.

Rush hour was a mess

Tennis-ball-sized hail pelted the northwest suburbs and power failures caused major traffic tieups in Plymouth at the start of the afternoon rush hour. There were reports of car windows broken by hail in Minnetonka.

The storm also caused the construction trailer to tip on its side and land on Comp's van about 2:15 p.m. Wednesday, said Plymouth Police Chief Mike Goldstein. Three people in the trailer had minor injuries.

Utility poles and trees were snapped in half in parts of Plymouth. Minor roof and siding damage to homes and businesses was reported, police said, but Plymouth resident Tony Buesing said an 8-foot portion of his chimney toppled over.

Buesing said his townhouse sustained no other damage, but he said that two other chimneys nearby fell, too.

"I was sitting in my cube" at work, Buesing said of the storm. "All of the people by the windows said, 'You've got to look at this. It looks like a hurricane out there.' "

As of Wednesday night, 7,053 Xcel Energy customers were still without power, most of them in the west metro.

An observer in St. Paul's Highland Park neighborhood recorded a wind gust of 53 miles per hour at 2:30 p.m. A 48-mph blast was measured near Byron, in southeastern Minnesota, at about 6 p.m.

Over an inch of rain

Heavy rain was another key feature of the storms. St. Paul Downtown Airport reported 1.19 inches between 1 and 7 p.m. and Owatonna received 1.12 inches. Osceola, Wis., reported 0.97 of an inch, South St. Paul 0.93 and Faribault 0.71. But St. Cloud received only 0.15 of an inch and Brainerd a trace.

Several schools in the northwestern suburbs of the metro area held students in basements and interior rooms after school until the tornado warning expired and the storm passed. Some school buses ran up to an hour late.

Two alarms at Fridley High

At Fridley High School, about 1,100 students, teachers and staff crowded into underground locker rooms, said Superintendent Mark Robertson. Two waves of alarms sounded, he said, keeping the school's population cooped up for about a half-hour.

"It got a little antsy in there toward the end," he said, but the school's emergency plan was followed.

On Wednesday night, Comp, who was trapped in her van for about five minutes, said she was fine physically but a little shaken.

And the reason for that earlier medical appointment?

A cholesterol check, she said, "and high blood pressure."

Staff writers Chao Xiong, Anthony Lonetree, Dan Wascoe, Tim Harlow, John McIntyre and David Chanen contributed to this report.

Bill McAuliffe • 612-673-7646 Bill's weather blog: www.startribune.com/airmass • mcaul@startribune.com