Photo courtesy of Samantha Fleet Noah Louwagie and Samantha Fleet stand in front of the steel shed where they had planned to hold their wedding reception next weekend. After the shed was destroyed by Monday morning’s severe storms, the couple received offers of a new venue from members of the community.

MARSHALL — On Sunday, Noah Louwagie and Samantha Fleet were getting things ready for their upcoming wedding at the Louwagie family farm outside Marshall. The to-do list included cleaning and preparing a steel machine shed for the wedding reception.

But overnight, everything changed.

“It was one of those jaw-dropping moments,” Louwagie said.

On Monday morning, they found the machine shed partly flattened by severe storms that tore through southwest Minnesota. The wedding was just five days away.

Memorial Day was bookended by severe weather in southwest Minnesota, with high winds tearing through the region in the early morning hours, and more wind, rain and hail hitting in the afternoon. In Marshall, two separate tornado warnings were issued about 13 hours apart.

Building damage, downed trees and power outages were reported around Lyon County.

In addition to the Louwagies’ shed being destroyed, Noah said the farm also suffered down trees in the grove and damage to other buildings.

“There’s tin scattered in the fields,” he said.

But there was a bright spot for Louwagie and Fleet. After Louwagie’s sister-in-law posted photos of the damage on social media, offers came in to help the couple find a new wedding venue.

Cassi Weiss, director of Visit Marshall, offered to hold the reception at the Red Baron Arena and Expo.

“I was just scrolling on Facebook, seeing what was going on around town, Weiss said Monday. She came across the photos of the damaged machine shed. Reaching out to Louwagie and Fleet about the wedding was “just another way to help someone,” she said.

“We want to say how thankful we are for the community,” Louwagie said.

He and his fiancee started getting contacted by area residents within a couple hours of the Facebook post.

“It’s just been really nice,” he said.

Area residents were at work throughout the day Monday to respond to the first storm, which hit Marshall around 3 a.m.

Crews from the Marshall public works department were out early Monday morning clearing downed branches and trees from city streets.

The city of Marshall said straight line winds of nearly 70 miles per hour caused damage around town, including some uprooted and fallen trees.

Memorial Day services at Marshall cemeteries went on as normal, although some storm debris could be seen around the cemetery grounds.

At the Marshall Cemetery, a volunteer was picking up American flags and flagpoles that had been knocked over by the storm. Some of the metal flagpoles lining the cemetery drive had been bent close to the ground.

Power outages were also a widespread problem in the region Monday.

On Monday morning, Xcel Energy reported a power outage affecting 480 customers in the Echo, Belview and Wood Lake area. They also reported several outages in the Cottonwood area, as well as outages in Granite Falls, Hanley Falls, Balaton and Garvin.

In a Facebook post Monday morning, Lyon-Lincoln Electric Cooperative said the storms interrupted the cooperative’s services overnight. Crews were working on replacing seven downed electric poles east of Marshall and west of Tracy. LLEC estimated that power would be restored by Monday afternoon, but how quickly that happened would depend on if there was more severe weather.

Tornado sirens went off in Marshall a second time around 4 p.m., as another wave of storms producing high winds, hail and heavy rain passed through the area.

National Weather Service forecasts say there’s a chance for more rainy weather today, although not as severe as what we saw Monday.

There will be a chance of showers and thunderstorms this morning, and a slight chance of showers in the afternoon. Wind gusts as high as 30 miles per hour are forecast.