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Undated (KROC-AM News) - Utility crews are still busy this afternoon restoring power to thousands of homes and businesses in Minnesota.

As of noon, Xcel Energy was reporting that around 3000 of its customers were still without service due to the strong thunderstorms that moved across the state last night and this morning. At the peak, the storm-related outages affected about 20,000 Xcel customers.

The strongest storms hit northern Minnesota last night and then moved through the Twin Cities early today. The National Weather Service received reports of wind gusts over 60 miles per hour, large hail, and 3 or more inches of rain with the majority of those reports coming from north-central Minnesota.

A secondary line of storms hit southeastern Minnesota early this morning. Radar showed the strongest parts of the system moved through areas west and south of Rochester between 6 and 8 AM. Some tree damage was reported in Mower County and La Crosse reported a nearly 60 miles per hour wind gust. About a half an of rain was recorded at the Rochester Airport.

The National Weather Service is advising this afternoon's steamy heat could fuel strong and possibly severe storms in southeastern Minnesota tonight. At this point, forecasters say the best chances for storm development will be between 7 PM and 2 AM.

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