WINONA, Minn. – Power outages from Wednesday night’s horrific winds were mostly rural. Rushford-based MIEnergy reported 7,500 outages. By mid-morning the cooperative had only 1,000 customers still without power. One-hundred households near Ridgeway and another 100 customers near Altura had no electricity overnight. In Wisconsin 1,400 customers in Trempealeau County were without power. So were another 13,000 in Onalaska, Holmen and Sparta. In the city of Winona, 300 Xcel Energy customers were without electricity, mostly attributed to four trees that crashed onto lines. Another 7,100 rural Xcel customers in southeast Minnesota also lost power. People’s energy Co-op said service to much of the Rochester suburb of Stewartville may not be resorted until mid-day Friday.
