PHOTO GALLERY: Severe storms hit the Mankato area

Thunderstorms rolled through southern Minnesota Friday night, spawning a series of warnings and watches, a handful of funnel clouds and enough downed trees and power lines to keep workers busy for a few days.

Among the worst damage was a home destroyed by a fire from a lightning strike (see related story). But elsewhere — across several counties — a wall of ornery, volatile weather pummeled everything in its path with thick sheets of rain, hail of varying sizes and winds strong enough to fell stately trees. As of late Friday, there were no reports of serious injuries.

Roads were closed all over, but there were plenty of motorists in scary situations.

Becky Portner and a friend were driving back from Mankato to New Ulm, where Portner lives, when they found themselves in the middle of torrential rains, wind and hail.

Unable to see the road, they pulled off into the parking lot of a Cenex station in Lafayette, which was closed. About 10 other vehicles around them had the same idea, two of which were motorcyclists getting pelted with hail.

Portner invited the two bikers into her Chevy Suburban, and the four of them watched as two funnel clouds dipped down toward the ground a couple of miles away.

“Then the truck starts shaking, and at one point it got picked up off the ground and set back down,” said Portner, who says she stayed fairly calm throughout the experience. “At that moment, it’s like, what are you gonna do? If it’s gonna pick you up, (you can’t do anything about it).”

In the Mankato area, flash flooding caused several other streets to close and basements to flood. Cable, power and phone outages were reported throughout the area.

In Blue Earth County, County Road 66 was impassable in several locations because of downed trees, including one location where a man holding a wet, black dog joked, “I always hated that tree.”

County Road 33 was closed in Rapidan for a while because of a downed power line. A few blocks away, Randy and Cindy Nunn were cleaning up the broken branches and limbs that littered their yard. In pieces on their front lawn was the sign for their family business, Broken Spoke Bicycle Repair.

They’d been watching the warnings and admonitions from the local television station, and had been paying attention to the weather for a few hours. Then they heard that telltale freight train sound, and hurried to the basement.

“Could have been worse,” said Randy, gathering tree branches with a rake. “Could have been a lot worse.”

Maria Bevacqua and Jessica Flatequal were leaving dinner at Tokyo Sushi & Hibachi when they ran for cover inside a local grocer.

“The guy on the radio said, ‘If you’re in a car in Mankato, get out now. Do whatever you have to do — Lie down in a ditch.’ So we looked for a business with signs of life. Goddess bless hilltop Cub Foods,” she said. “They led us to the back area where everyone was waiting out the storm. They brought out Cub jackets and bottled water for anyone who was wet and cold or thirsty.”

At some point during the evening, nearly every area county was under some kind of warning.

The National Weather Service had issued a tornado watch early in the day, noting that conditions were favorable for tornadoes.

By 6 p.m., broadcasters were telling people to take cover.

In North Mankato, anyone daring enough to drive down Belgrade Avenue would have seen rain thick enough to force many motorists to pull over, and heard marble-sized hail pounding off the roofs of their vehicles.

Streets in several communities flooded, including Lake Crystal, where firefighters had Main Street blocked off after debris clogged the drains at the intersection of State Highway 60. After the storm blew through, men in dive suits worked to clear the drains and help a pair of stranded motorists who had driven into the temporary lake trying to get into town.

Across Lake Crystal people took stock of the damage. Downed trees and branches littered most of the streets.

In upper North Mankato, crops along Foxtail Lane were flattened by winds, as were large trees, several of which fell at the Rob and Sandy Chatleain residence.

“We weren’t home when it happened,” Rob said.

Added Sandy, “Everybody was saying they think it was straight-line winds. I’m just blessed it didn’t fall on my house.”

County law enforcement officials as well as Department of Natural Resources conservation officers fanned out across the region to assess damage.