Rochester, MN (KROC-AM News) - Line crews from Rochester Public Utilities are assisting crews from People's Energy Cooperative as they work around the clock to restore power to thousands of homes and businesses in southeastern Minnesota.

At last report (5 PM Friday), about 2,400 People's Energy customers still lacked electrical service in the aftermath of Thursday's wind and ice storm that heavily damaged the power infrastructure in the region. At the peak of the outage on Thursday almost 9000 People's Energy customers were affected.

A spokesperson for People's Energy Cooperative says the most severe damage to its power grid is in the southwest portion of People's service area where crews are dealing with broken or leaning power poles. The affected customers in those areas may have to wait a couple of days to have service restored.

Over 2000 customers of the Freeborn-Mower Cooperative also remain without power, along with about 1200 customers of Xcel Energy.

The National Weather Service has updated the snowfall totals from this week's late winter storm, and they are impressive. Areas of eastern South Dakota saw over 2 feet of snow, while the highest report in Minnesota came from the far western city of Madison at 20-inches. Montevideo and several other western Minnesota communities reported 17-inches of new snow and there were reports of over a foot of accumulation in parts of the Twin Cities.

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