Well, that was interesting. I woke up this morning, either because my CPAP stopped working or because I heard stuff hitting the side of the house. Didn’t know what time that was, since the clock I could see is electric.
My son came in a few minutes later to look out the window. We passed a few words, and I went back to sleep. In situations like that, there’s not much I can do: and my body insisted that sleep was important.
When I woke up again — always a good thing — the sun was coming up and the power was still down. I noticed that there were pieces of leaves plastered on the still-wet window. That confirmed what I’d assumed from the sound of stuff hitting the sides of the house. We’d been experiencing above-average wind.
The house, and that part of Sauk Centre I can see out the window — which reminds me, I need to reboot the webcam. I’ll do that before posting this — was very, very quiet. Earlier, when my son had looked out into a dark town, he’d mentioned that power was out. Don’t recall his exact words.
Anyway, there was almost no traffic on the street, the road work in the next block hadn’t started, and the house was very, very quiet. That reminded me of how much electrical equipment we use.
Time passed. I did my morning routines that didn’t need power, remembered that there’s an extreme heat warning on for this area over the weekend, and hoped that we’d get power back in time for the air conditioning to help.
Then, about 10:20 a.m., the power came back on. Number-three daughter came in to adjust the air conditioning controls to over-correct for the morning’s outage, let me know what was happening, and I started catching up on the ‘needs power’ parts of my routines.
Good news: seems that nobody in town got hurt last night. Trees down, blocking streets, on the north side, and some houses got damaged. Still, this could have been a lot worse.
“Severe Thunderstorm Hits Central Minnesota With Heavy Winds”
Paul Habstritt, WJON (June 20, 2025)“Central Minnesota had another bout of severe weather early Friday morning. At about 2:30 a.m., the National Weather Service issued a Severe Thunderstorm Warning for northeastern Stearns County and southwestern Todd County that was in effect until 3:15 a.m.
“The system was moving southeast through Sauk Centre and the Melrose area with strong straight-line winds and quarter-inch-sized hail. At just after 3:00 a.m., a second warning was issued for eastern Stearns County until 4:00 a.m. when weather spotters reported winds of 66 mph at the Sauk Centre Airport. The Stearns County Sheriff’s Office says the northern part of Sauk Centre saw significant damage, including about a dozen streets closed due to downed trees, downed power lines, and flooding….”
That’s it for me now. Next comes rebooting the webcam, finding out why the household’s Internet connection’s been intermittent — aside from the obvious, what I mean is I’ll ask my son if he’s doing some maintenance — and then I’ll see what happens next.
NAH! The connection’s been stable for a few minutes. I’ll just do that reboot, and ask questions later.
