Minnesota

Minnesota state parks took major weather, flooding hits, too

Published

2 years ago

June 26, 2024

Minnesota state parks took major weather, flooding hits, too

Heavy rain and flash flooding across Minnesota have washed out state park campsites and trails, damaged regularly used bridges and roads, and altered popular attractions to a statewide scale unlike any other time in recent memory, according to a state manager.

Rachel Hopper, of the Department of Natural Resources (DNR) Parks and Trails Division, recalled regionalized weather-related damage such as the flooding in 2012 that hit the Duluth area and took out the Swinging Bridge over the St. Louis River at Jay Cooke State Park. The current aftermath is different, she said.

“We don’t recall every having seen something like this,” said Hopper, who runs visitor services and outreach, referring to the breadth of the damage.

Current cancellations by campers are three times their normal rate for this time of year, she added.

“That we’ve have had such extensive wet conditions and, layered on top, the most recent rains that have led to flooding … we have never seen that across the whole state,” Hopper said.

While the DNR continues to assess trouble spots and watch rising water at places along the Mississippi and Minnesota rivers, here is some of what is known by region:

North and northeast

Lake Vermilion-Soudan Underground Mine State Park: Severe flooding in the mine shaft has closed tours, and crews continue to pump out water in stages, said Chuck Carpenter, DNR northeast regional manager. The main shaft runs to about 2,500 feet. More than 8 inches of rain fell in the Lake Vermilion area June 18. Mine tours reopened to the public over Memorial Day weekend after the mine was closed by the COVID-19 pandemic and then needed repairs. The DNR said the current damage is unknown. Above-ground tours continue.

Other parks: Trail damage is a concern at four North Shore parks, including paths along the Gooseberry, Baptism, Manitou and Temperance rivers.

Hopper said the recent weather exacerbated the erosion of paths at Gooseberry, where flooding that consumed boardwalks and stairways at the lower falls last week has receded in recent days. Carpenter said an already-saturated section of trail on the northeast side of the river collapsed into the river.

As is the case at Gooseberry, water has closed off areas of Tettegouche State Park, near Finland. Cascade Falls along the Baptism River at the park is inaccessible after a hillside broke away on the trail, and Superior Hiking Trail (SHT) users have been forced to detour off the path near the High Falls.

Trail association operators director Tamer Ibrahim said there are reports of damage to bridges on the East Baptism River closer to Finland, too.

“There is a lot out there that we still don’t know,” he said, after hearing reports of other bridge damage and parts of the trail washed out.

Ibrahim said hikers should approach any trail crossings near a river or stream with “extreme caution,” owing to possible erosion.

At George H. Crosby Manitou State Park, the Manitou River Bridge was damaged by water and debris, detouring SHT users. Also, several backpack campsites are off-limits, including one area that slid into the river.

Baptism River flooding overran and closed the Eckbeck campground in the Finland State Forest, and damaged parts of the camping area in Finland. Elsewhere in the state forest, the Sullivan Lake campground in Two Harbors is closed for flood damage to everything from vault toilets to campsites.

Savanna Portage State Park: Flooding and washouts have closed several roads to lakes, including the route to the group camp at the park north of McGregor. The water is off in the campground indefinitely to fix broken pipes, according to the park website.

Central and metro parks

Wild River State Park: Parts of some trails are closed at the park east of North Branch and along the St. Croix River. A damaged water line has closed the dump station indefinitely. Reservations are off for the guest house, owing to electrical problems.

Fort Snelling State Park: The popular metro location is at the confluence of the Mississippi and Minnesota rivers in Hennepin County between Minneapolis and St. Paul, and could be closed for several weeks, the DNR said. The Mississippi River is forecast to crest Saturday afternoon in St. Paul. The agency anticipates the rivers will leave behind extensive silt to clean from park buildings, as well as road damage. The park closed from mid-March until July after flooding in 2019.

Afton State Park: Also along the St. Croix River, the popular metro park has some flooded trails, road washouts, and public areas underwater, like the swimming beach and parts of the lower picnic area. Swimming is discouraged. The river continues to rise and is expected to crest sometime early next week.

Minnesota Valley State Trail: There are fears for the impact of flooding on the construction work underway on a new phase of the multiuse trail, in the Bloomington area between the Xcel Energy power plant and Old Cedar Avenue Bridge.

To the south

Minneopa State Park: The Mankato area park, home to the part of the Conservation Bison Herd that draws thousands of visitors this time of year, has dealt with heavy rain and subsequent flooding. The bison drive has reopened but several trails are closed (Seppman Mill included), in addition to access to Minneopa creek and falls.

Blue Mounds State Park: There are wet conditions around the park, outside Luverne, and the campground, but flooding has receded. Vehicle tours of the bison range are tentatively set to resume Thursday.

The DNR has reminded the public that much of the parks and trails system is unaffected. As for the other areas that are in flux, like Ibrahim, Hopper emphasized caution in the days ahead, avoiding flood-damaged areas even if they are unmarked, for example. She also encouraged visitors, ahead of their plans, to check alerts and closures from the parks’ web pages and the DNR social platforms.

“We still don’t know the extent of the damage everywhere,” she said, “and in some places we won’t know until flood waters recede.”

Carpenter, the northeast regional manager, said resources can only take so much amid more extreme bursts of rain, wherever it happens.

“The volume [of rainfall] is more and the intensity is more and it is really putting a stress on the facilities, the trails, everything.”

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Minnesota

Support from DC for Michele Tafoya’s Senate run splits Minnesota GOP

Published

5 hours ago

May 15, 2026

Press Room

Support from DC for Michele Tafoya’s Senate run splits Minnesota GOP

The former sportscaster is expected to struggle to win the endorsement over her GOP rivals.

Ana Radelat
| MinnPost

Former sportscaster Michele Tafoya is seeking the Republican nomination for a Minnesota U.S. Senate seat.
Tafoya’s past moderate stances and criticism of Donald Trump have alienated some conservative party delegates.
Despite internal party divisions, Tafoya has significantly outraised her GOP rivals with help from the national party.

A dream candidate for the national Republican Party, former sportscaster Michele Tafoya is finding support from Washington to be a double-edged sword as she seeks to win retiring Sen. Tina Smith’s seat.

Tafoya, 61, is a skilled and media-savvy communicator whose name recognition and political smarts prompted the National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC) to call her “the only candidate with the common-sense leadership Minnesotans are desperately craving.”

Tafoya gets endorsement from Sen. Tim Scott

The endorsement by NRSC Chairman Sen. Tim Scott, R-S.C., made just after Tafoya announced her candidacy in January, has rankled some Minnesota Republicans.

Why? Because there were other Republicans vying for Smith’s seat, including Navy SEAL Adam Schwarze, former NBA player Royce White and Navy veteran Tom Weiler.

Another GOP candidate, former Minnesota Republican Party candidate David Hann, was also in the race at that time but dropped out last month. And Mark York, a seven-generation farmer from Lake Wilson is also running.

Yet the national Republican Party, which is battling to prevent a Democratic takeover of the U.S. Senate in November’s midterm election, placed its bet on Tafoya.

That has disgruntled some of the 2,500 Republican delegates who will vote to endorse the GOP Senate candidates in Duluth at the end of the month.

“You have people who would see (support from the national party) as a plus, and there also are people who would see it as meddling from Washington,” said Frank Long, a delegate and longtime party activist from Watertown Township who supports Schwarze.

Long said the state’s Republicans “are not a monolithic organization.” He said some delegates are concerned about Tafoya’s support for abortion – which she says now is limited to procedures in the first 12 weeks of pregnancy.

Tafoya has also expressed support for “red flag” laws — which allow law enforcement to temporarily remove weapons to individuals a court has assessed might be a danger to themselves or others — that are opposed by many gun-rights delegates.

Remarks Tafoya made about President Donald Trump in 2022 are another turnoff for some GOP delegates. She wrote an open letter to Trump in a now deleted post on Substack that said she hoped he would not run again, and even as she praised his accomplishments, she called his politics “messy.”

While Tafoya may not be the first choice of some delegates, “she has the right to run,” Long said.

Tafoya has since aligned herself closely with Trump’s platform and embroiled herself in the culture wars with her fierce opposition to transgender women in female sports.

But if she makes it to the general election, running against either Rep. Angie Craig, D-2^nd District, or Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan, who are locked in battle for the Democratic nomination, Tafoya will likely revert to the more moderate candidate she once considered herself to be.

“I think Minnesota is starving for a moderate Republican who doesn’t tell them that they’re going to ban abortion who is the antithesis of the Tim Walz regime,” Tafoya told WDAY Radio when Smith announced her retirement early last year.

After the February 2022 Super Bowl, Tafoya quit her broadcasting career, launched a political podcast and spent several years weighing whether to run for political office. She met with the NRSC in December and declared her candidacy about a month later.

Weiler, who ran unsuccessfully for the 3^rd Congressional District seat in 2022, said he contacted the NRSC last fall seeking support. But he said the people he spoke with seemed uninterested in him because he was “not rich or famous.”

He said he was surprised and disappointed that the NRSC backed Tafoya.

“It was clearly a decision made in Washington, D.C., without any input from Minnesotans,” Weiler said.

Tafoya raised more than $2 million in the two months after she announced her candidacy, with the help of the national GOP. That’s more money than all of her GOP rivals combined.

According to filings with the Federal Election Commission, the NRSC gave Tafoya’s campaign $62,000 and Senate Republican Leader John Thune’s leadership political action committee has held joint fundraisers with Tafoya’s campaign.

The national party’s endorsement also brings help in recruiting campaign staff and campaign consulting, a must-have for a candidate who has never before run for political office.

Minnesota is ‘a grass-roots state’

Tim Lindberg, a political science professor at the University of Minnesota-Morris, said the national Republican Party had to step into the race for Smith’s seat “to some extent because the state party has been in disarray.”

Shut out of holding a statewide seat for 20 years, the state party is low on cash and divided between the establishment Republicans, like Tafoya, and more conservative MAGA activists.

So, while Tafoya’s campaign has had a boost from the NRSC and other GOP national organizations it is not guaranteed that she will win the votes of 60% of the GOP delegates needed to win an endorsement.

Tafoya’s campaign did not respond to requests for an interview and information. But the former sportscaster has said she will continue to run for the U.S. Senate and participate in the Aug. 11 primary even without an endorsement.

Historically, not all of Minnesota’s GOP candidates have abided by the endorsement. But the state’s political history also shows that Republican voters don’t reward non-endorsed candidates very often, especially in statewide elections, when the primary comes around.

Schwarze, another rival for the GOP endorsement, said Republicans “don’t reward people who take shortcuts.”

He called Tafoya a “D.C. out-of -the -box candidate” and is confident he will earn the endorsement, even if it takes several rounds of balloting.

“Minnesotans are not for sale,” Schwarze said. “This is a grass-roots state.”

The former Navy SEAL speaks in military terms about the U.S. Senate race.

“I’ve been preparing for this campaign run as if it were a ‘no-fail’ mission,” he said. After Tafoya, Schwarze, who reported raising more than $1 million as of March 31, has amassed the largest campaign chest among the GOP Senate candidates. Yet Democrats Craig and Flanagan have much larger war chests than Tafoya and Schwarze.

Both Schwarze and White — who won the GOP endorsement to run against Sen. Amy Klobuchar in 2024 — have vowed to abide by the endorsement and support the delegates’ candidate of choice.

“The mission is going to get a Republican U.S. Senator,” Schwarze said.

But Weiler has a different attitude. He said he would continue his campaign unless he’s convinced the delegates have chosen a candidate “who can win and be an effective senator for Minnesota.”

Tafoya is a high profile Minnesota senate candidate

Lindberg said Tafoya is well liked for her high profile in the world of sports.

She spent three decades covering the NBA, NFL, Olympics and college football. A Californian by birth, many Minnesotans got to know Tafoya when she worked as a sportscaster and reporter for sports radio KFAN in Minneapolis — covering the Vikings — the Midwest Sports Channel and WCCO-TV.

Lindberg said the NRSC is “banking” on her popularity and name recognition. But he said that strategy could “backfire” in an endorsement process that is dominated by party activists in both the Democratic and Republican state conventions.

“It’s not clear that the people at these conventions really care about electability,” he said.

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Minnesota

Minnesota could see northern lights tonight, here’s how

Published

17 hours ago

May 14, 2026

Press Room

Minnesota could see northern lights tonight, here’s how

Minnesotans could see northern lights on May 14 and 15 as the natural spectacle will be visible through several northern states.

The best time to look for the aurora borealis is between 11 p.m. and 2 a.m. local time, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Space Weather Prediction Center.

Showers and thunderstorms are predicted in the early evening in St. Cloud, but skies should clear somewhat before the northern lights show would begin, according to the NOAA forecast.

There could be more auroras to come this weekend as well, as the geomagnetic activity that makes the lights viewable is predicted to continue through May 16.

Here’s what to know about catching the northern lights.

When will the northern lights be viewable?

People in several U.S. states may get chances to see the aurora display on May 14 and 15. The best times to view the lights are generally between 10 p.m. and 2 a.m. local time, according to NOAA, though this can vary significantly by location and as weather and visibility forecasts are updated.

This time around, geomagnetic activity is expected to peak between 11 p.m. and 2 a.m. local time, according to the forecast, which could trigger moderate geomagnetic storms that make the auroras viewable farther south.

More up-to-date forecasts can be found on NOAA’S Aurora Dashboard.

Which states can see the northern lights?

How far and wide the auroras can clearly be seen will depend on whether the geomagnetic storm reaches a G1 to G2 (mild to moderate) or G3 (strong) level and the weather in your location.

Though Canada is getting the best, most intense viewing this time around, the states listed below will have at least a chance of catching a glimpse, according to NOAA’S forecast map.

Washington
Idaho
Montana
North Dakota
Minnesota
Michigan
Wisconsin

What are the northern lights, aka aurora borealis?

The northern lights are a luminous glow seen around the magnetic poles of the Northern and Southern hemispheres, according to the University of Alaska Fairbanks Geophysical Institute. Known for creating ribbons of colorful light in the night sky, the aurora borealis are polar lights, or aurora polaris, that appear in the Northern Hemisphere.

The Southern Hemisphere has its own polar lights known as the southern lights, or aurora australis, which create their own dazzling display.

Put simply, auroras are a result of the sun interacting with the Earth’s atmosphere. A collision between electrically charged particles from the sun and gases in Earth’s atmosphere produces a series of minuscule flashes that appear like moving lights in the sky. The charged particles are pulled toward the North and South poles due to Earth’s magnetic field.

While that magnetic field usually protects the Earth from solar winds, the winds can occasionally get strong enough to bypass the field, allowing particles and gases in the magnetosphere to interact and generate the colorful displays, according to the Geophysical Institute and the Canadian Space Agency.

Tips for viewing the northern lights

The top tip for getting the best view of the northern lights is finding a dark spot away from light pollution. Space.com recommends finding a location as far as possible from city lights and heading out there as soon as the sky gets dark. Then, it’s a waiting game.

Find a north-facing view with a clear horizon and exercise patience, as the lights often come in waves, said Space.com. You can also download apps to track aurora forecasts based on your location, such as “My Aurora Forecast & Alerts.”

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Minnesota

Caribou Coffee in Minnesota launches value menu

Published

1 day ago

May 14, 2026

Press Room

Caribou Coffee in Minnesota launches value menu

Caribou Coffee has launched a new value menu, with items priced as low as $2.
The coffee chain made the change to expand the options for customers and create more flexibility, a company officer said.
Check the list for Caribou Coffee locations in central Minnesota.

Caribou Coffee, a coffeehouse known for its handcrafted beverages made with real ingredients, is rolling out a new value menu at participating locations nationwide.

Beginning May 7, a company release stated, Caribou Coffee is serving Caribou Everyday Value Menu items, including to-go favorites and barista-made beverages.

The Everyday Value Menu features a curated lineup of Caribou classics now offered at prices starting at $2, the release stated. Guests will be able to enjoy signature items such as a small, specialty-grade brewed coffee, streusel-topped blueberry muffins and Caribou’s Cold Press, its version of cold-brewed coffee.

The value menu also introduces a new a bacon breakfast sandwich. It features crispy bacon, a cage-free scrambled egg patty and melted cheddar cheese layered on a toasted English muffin for $4. These prices are before tax.

“For many of our guests, their daily coffee ritual is a meaningful part of their day, and we know how much it matters that it delivers on quality, convenience and value,” Matt Reiter, chief commercial and strategy officer for Caribou said in a release. “At Caribou, we’re committed to creating a consistent, high-quality experience every time someone walks into one of our coffeehouses, with a range of options that fit into their day. The Everyday Value Menu expands the ways we do that and creates even more flexibility and value for guests.”

Caribou’s Everyday Value Menu includes:

$2 small brewed coffee: A rotating selection of regular and seasonal coffees, brewed every hour to ensure maximum freshness
$3 Blueberry Muffin: A blueberry muffin topped with streusel
$3.50 small Cold Press coffee: Caribou’s cold brew coffee served over ice
$4 Bacon Breakfast Sandwich: Crispy bacon, cage-free scrambled egg patty and melted cheddar cheese layered on a toasted English muffin

Caribou is also offering non-dairy customization at no extra charge, the release stated. Also, the Caribou Perks loyalty program allows guests to earn points with every Caribou purchase. These points are redeemable for free handcrafted beverages, bakery items and more.

Guests can order items from the Everyday Value Menu in-store, at the drive-thru and through the Caribou Coffee app for pickup or delivery.

Caribou Coffee serves handcrafted beverages and food items in more than 800 coffeehouses worldwide. It opened its first location in 1992. Focused on smart growth, the coffee shop operates and franchises coffeehouses across 11 countries.