Severe weather rolled through Cottonwood County early Wednesday evening. Now, this morning, survey crews from the National Weather Service are surveying sites in the county for possible tornado damage from those storms.
Cottonwood County was placed into tornado warnings a couple of times Wednesday evening, with reports of at least three confirmed tornado touchdowns in the county.
Emergency Manager Paul Johnson said that the worst of the damage begins at the Cottonwood/Murray county line about a mile south of County Road 13 and continues to the northeast, through Storden and roughly three miles north of Storden. Video posted to Facebook also showed a possible tornado near the Jeffers corner.
Johnson said he would be taking the NWS survey teams through the county this morning and crews would determine if damage was caused by a tornado or by straight-line winds.
While power did not go out in the immediate Windom area, Federated Rural Electric reported outages for roughly 1,100 customers in Southern Jackson County following last night’s storms.
A transmission line owned by Great River Energy lost power last night. Power was restored to the Miloma and Lakefield substations by 6:40 p.m. and Round Lake at 7:44 p.m. Federated reported that 10 three-phase poles were downed in Southern Jackson County. Crews are repairing the damaged poles this morning.
Much of the western part of Minnesota could see another round of severe weather late this afternoon into the evening hours today. The Storm Prediction Center has the area in an enhanced risk for severe weather, or a 3 on a scale of 5.
