Severe Storms effect Dodge County and go on to effect the Rochester area as strong storms. Tornteial rains 1.73" in a short timespan at my location

Shot of heavy rain and gusty winds in Northern Rochester-Buckridge Park area May 26th 2012

Severe Thunderstorms impacted the area once again today, although the time it effected western and central parts of the area with severe hail, gusty winds torrential downpours. Thunderstorms were ongoing in Western Minnesota this morning around 9am. The storms continue to track down a frontal boundary east through mid morning hours and finally entered the local area around 11am when they really begun to strengthen east of Owatonna.

 Radar image as the storm was effecting Dodge County. Screenshot courtesy of a friend who was helping out

As the storms strengthened severe hail larger then quarter sized was reported near Claremont in Dodge county after this report this storm continue to push down highway 14 effecting communities along highway 14 and eventually into the Rochester metropolitan area where it brought torrentially heavy rains, lots of penny sized hail and gusty winds. There were lots of reports of penny sized hail in areas of Rochester south of West Circle Drive and 55th street NW including the Downtown area where dime sized hail was reported along with a windy gust of 40MPH at St Marys. I was in Northern Rochester where I work where very heavy rain and gusty SE winds were seen along with lots of lighting but no hail was seen, but I heard from family and locals that "very heavy rain and hail so hard you could barely see" was predominant in the Downtown area and my neighborhood. When work ended I came home to 1.73" in my raingauge, all of which fell in a 30 minute time span! Urban Street flooding was and issue for during the rain. There was lots of washouts in driveways and industrial lots around the city and you could tell the streets were filled with water when the heavy rain occurred. Ditches were full along highway 52 where could see standing water on top of brown grass from previous drought conditions.

Storm Reports

2 miles S Claremont 1.25" hail

Byron 0.75" hail

Kasson 0.75" hail

3 miles SW Rochester 0.75" hail

West Downtown Rochester 0.50" hail also heavy rain 1.73" fell in short time

2 miles S Claremont Heavy Rain 1.73"

2 miles W Eyota Heavy Rain 2.16"

Dodge Center Heavy Rain 1.89"