Another stormy and steamy day in Minnesota brought multiple waves of strong and severe thunderstorms, along with intense humid heat in southern and central portions of the state.
Monday June 29, 2026 began with heavy thunderstorms tracking through northeastern Minnesota. One batch of storms regenerated for several hours near the shore of Lake Superior, leading to excessive rainfall. Around 9 AM, a large and damaging storm that had tracked across South Dakota for over six hours entered far western Minnesota. This storm had been highly destructive in South Dakota in the early morning, where measured wind gusts up to 131 mph snapped large wind turbines and produced extreme, tornado-like damage.
The strong and damaging thunderstorm multiplied and expanded in Minnesota, with consistent reports of damage to trees and power lines, and also large hail, as the complex of storms tracked through Fergus Falls, the Brainerd Lakes area, Grand Rapids, Hibbing, and Duluth before passing over Lake Superior and into Wisconsin in the afternoon.
The storms had formed along a boundary separating extremely warm and unstable air across South Dakota and the southern 2/3 of Minnesota from humid but cooler air in northern Minnesota and North Dakota. This boundary lifted northward during the day, and remained "active," with additional strong and severe thunderstorms forming in the afternoon and evening over northern, western, and far southern Minnesota. Just after 3 AM (on June 30), thunderstorm winds gusted to 80 mph near Jackson, and 76 mph near Mountain Lake.
In addition to severe weather, the storms also produced some beneficial, and even heavy rain, with totals of 1.5 to over three inches from near Gull Lake, through the Brainerd Lakes region, to parts of the Lake Superior shore. The heaviest rains, around three inches total, occurred near Two Harbors and Tettegouche State Park.
The air mass fueling the storms and rain was hot and very humid. Temperatures reached the upper 80s and lower 90s F over the southern half of Minnesota, but dew point temperatures soared into steamy upper 70s and even lower 80s F at some locations, making this one of the most intensely humid June days in the past few decades, with the most recent occurrence on the exact same date in 2018.
Posted July 1, 2026
KAB