MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — Storms with lightning and hail and at least one observed tornado were moving through the upper Midwest on Monday with the potential for strong tornadoes.
The National Weather Service said the highest risks — a 4 on a scale of 1 to 5 — were in portions of southern Minnesota, including the Minneapolis-St. Paul area, northern Iowa and western Wisconsin. Forecasters had expected two rounds of severe weather, with the possibility of tornadoes in the EF-2 range or greater.
“The most dangerous period is likely during the late afternoon and evening when strong tornado potential should be maximized,” meteorologists at the Storm Prediction Center in Norman, Oklahoma, wrote.
The National Weather Service in the Twin Cities said Monday afternoon that they had a report of an observed tornado looking west from Fairmont, Minnesota, which is southwest of Minneapolis.
Pea- to marble-sized hail pelted parts of Faribault County in southern Minnesota, and rain was heavy, Sheriff Scott Adams said.
“A heavy downpour -- it became extremely dark out,” he said.
The National Weather Service reported receiving multiple reports of tornadoes near the small town of Winnebago, Minnesota, about 110 miles (177 kilometers) southwest of Minneapolis-St. Paul. But Adams said the reports weren’t confirmed and there appeared to be no wind damage as of Monday evening.
Melissa Dye, a meteorologist at the National Weather Service’s office in the Twin Cities, said spotters likely saw “gustnados,” which are small whirlwinds that form during thunderstorms but are not connected to a cloud base, as a tornado. She said they can look like tornadoes because of they kick up dust and debris.
Dye said spotting a tornado would be difficult because they’d be wrapped by the rain.
The Minneapolis-St. Paul area appeared to largely skirt the worst of the weather.
“Any severe threat is pretty much done for the metro area,” she said Monday evening.
She said there is still some storm activity in the Albert Lea area, just north of the Iowa border.
The Storm Prediction Center said a lesser potential for severe weather extended as far south as parts of Texas and Oklahoma.
Monday's first round of storms darkened skies over downtown Minneapolis around 9 a.m. and brought brief heavy rains, but it triggered no weather warnings as it passed through.
The City of Minneapolis closed its public-facing non-emergency city facilities, including its main service center, as of 2 p.m. and activated its emergency operations center.
The Minneapolis, St. Paul and Bloomington school districts were among several in Minnesota that canceled evening activities ahead of the storms. Some Iowa schools also closed early for the day or canceled evening activities.
As severe thunderstorms began popping up in the early afternoon, the National Weather Service reported 2.8-inch (7 centimeters) hail near Beaver Creek in southwestern Minnesota. Forecasters issued tornado watches for almost the entire southern half of Minnesota, plus much of northern Iowa and western Wisconsin, effective until late Tuesday.
On Sunday evening, a tornado derailed an empty BNSF coal train west of Ashby in northwestern Nebraska. Initial reports were that a tornado measuring more than 1 mile (1.6 kilometers) wide derailed many of the approximately 130 cars on the train, toppling several onto their sides. There were no immediate reports of injuries and the locomotive remained upright, the News Channel Nebraska radio group reported. It was one of several tornadoes reported in that part of Nebraska on Sunday evening.
AP writer John Hanna in Topeka, Kansas, contributed to this story.
Thunderstorms and rain is expected in the metro area including downtown Minneapolis, Minn., Monday, April 28, 2025. (Richard Tsong-Taatarii/Star Tribune via AP)
Shawn Bowie enjoyed her apple in a respite from thunderstorms and rain expected in the metro area including downtown Minneapolis, Minn., Monday, April 28, 2025. (Richard Tsong-Taatarii/Star Tribune via AP)
FILE - The Doppler radar located outside of the National Weather Service office in Sullivan, Wis., on Jan. 5, 2018. (Anthony Wahl/The Janesville Gazette via AP, file)
ROME (AP) — U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Saturday that the Vatican could be a venue for Russia-Ukraine peace talks, taking up the Holy See’s longstanding offer after Pope Leo XIV vowed to personally make “every effort” to help end the war.
Speaking to reporters in Rome before meeting with Cardinal Matteo Zuppi, the Vatican point man on Ukraine, Rubio said that he would be discussing potential ways the Vatican could help, “the status of the talks, the updates after yesterday (Friday) and the path forward.”
Asked if the Vatican could be a peace broker, Rubio replied: “I wouldn’t call it broker, but it’s certainly — I think it’s a place that both sides would be comfortable going.”
“So we’ll talk about all of that and obviously always grateful to the Vatican for their willingness to play this constructive and positive role,” he said at the U.S. Embassy in Rome.
The Vatican has a tradition of diplomatic neutrality and had long offered its services to try to help facilitate talks, but found itself sidelined during the all-out war, which began on Feb. 24, 2022.
Pope Francis, who often angered both sides with his comments, had entrusted Zuppi with a mandate to try to find paths of peace. But the mandate seemed to narrow to help facilitate the return of Ukrainian children taken by Russia, and the Holy See also was able to mediate some prisoner exchanges.
Leo, who was elected history’s first American pope on May 8, took up Francis’ call for peace in Ukraine in his first Sunday noon blessing as pope. He appealed for all sides to do whatever possible to reach “an authentic, just and lasting peace.”
Leo, who as a bishop in Peru had called Russia's war an “imperialist invasion," vowed this week personally to “make every effort so that this peace may prevail.”
In a speech to eastern rite Catholics, including the Greek Catholic Church of Ukraine, Leo begged warring sides to meet and negotiate.
“The Holy See is always ready to help bring enemies together, face to face, to talk to one another, so that peoples everywhere may once more find hope and recover the dignity they deserve, the dignity of peace,” he said.
The Vatican secretary of state, Cardinal Pietro Parolin, repeated the Vatican’s offer to serve as a venue for direct talks, saying the failure of negotiations in Istanbul to reach a ceasefire this week was “tragic.”
“We had hoped it could start a process, slow but positive, toward a peaceful solution to the conflict,” Parolin said on the sidelines of a conference. “But instead we’re back to the beginning.”
Asked concretely what such an offer would entail, Parolin said that the Vatican could serve as a venue for a direct meeting between the two sides.
“One would aim to arrive at this, that at least they talk. We’ll see what happens. It’s an offer of a place,” he said.
“We have always said, repeated to the two sides that we are available to you, with all the discretion needed,” Parolin said.
The Vatican scored what was perhaps its greatest diplomatic achievement of the Francis pontificate when it facilitated the talks between the United States and Cuba in 2014 that resulted in the resumption of diplomatic relations.
The Holy See has also often hosted far less secret diplomatic initiatives, such as when it brought together the rival leaders of South Sudan in 2019. The encounter was made famous by the image of Francis bending down to kiss their feet to beg them to make peace.
Perhaps the Holy See's most critical diplomatic initiative came during the peak of the Cuban missile crisis when, in the fall of 1962, Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev ordered a secret deployment of nuclear missiles in Cuba that were soon detected by U.S. spy planes.
As the Kennedy administration considered its response, with the threat of nuclear war looming, Pope John XXIII pleaded for peace in a public radio address, in a speech to Vatican ambassadors and also wrote privately to Kennedy and Khruschev, appealing to their love of their people to stand down.
Many historians have credited John XXIII’s appeals with helping both sides step back from the brink of nuclear war.
Associated Press religion coverage receives support through the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio, speaks to the media during a meeting with President of the Conference of Italian Bishops, Cardinal Matteo Zuppi at the U.S. Embassy to the Holy See in Rome, Saturday, May 17, 2025. (AP Photo/Gregorio Borgia)
Secretary of State Marco Rubio, left, and President of the Conference of Italian Bishops, Cardinal Matteo Zuppi, pose for a photo at the U.S. Embassy to the Holy See in Rome, Saturday, May 17, 2025. (AP Photo/Gregorio Borgia)
Secretary of State Marco Rubio, left, and President of the Conference of Italian Bishops, Cardinal Matteo Zuppi, meet at the U.S. Embassy to the Holy See in Rome, Saturday, May 17, 2025. (AP Photo/Gregorio Borgia)
Secretary of State Marco Rubio, left, and President of the Conference of Italian Bishops, Cardinal Matteo Zuppi, pose for a photo at the U.S. Embassy to the Holy See in Rome, Saturday, May 17, 2025. (AP Photo/Gregorio Borgia)
