More severe storms could develop in southern Minnesota later Wednesday

Strong to severe storms continue to push across central and northern Minnesota on Wednesday afternoon and some of the nastiest areas of weather could produce damaging winds. How things develop the rest of the day and night across southern Minnesota, including for the Twin Cities metro, remains a bit of an unknown.

Sign up for our BREAKING WEATHER newsletters

While severe thunder storm watches have been posted in western, central and northeastern Minnesota — where thunderstorms were ongoing as of 3:30 p.m. — locations generally south of the St. Cloud area have gone unscathed so far.

"The best odds for secondary development would favor along and south of the Minnesota river," says the National Weather Service in the Twin Cities. If that's the case, it could leave the Twin Cities just south of the first line of storms and just north of the second line of storms.

At 3 p.m., NOAA's Storm Prediction Center expanded the enhanced severe threat zone (level 3 of 5 on the severe scale) to cover more of Minnesota.

The area covers a broad swath of the Upper Midwest, including parts of the Dakotas. It stops short of the Twin Cities but does include St. Cloud. Damaging winds and large hail are the main threats, though tornadoes can't be ruled out.

Here's Sven Sundgaard's latest forecast on today's weather: