How do I stop a leak until help arrives in Minneapolis?

Contain The Water Now

Slide a bucket, pan, or folded towel under the drip path the moment you spot it, whether that's a bungalow attic near Tangletown or a Lowry Hill East foursquare. If water is tracking along a joist toward a wall, reroute it with a string or cord so it drips somewhere you can catch it instead of running behind plaster where you can't see it.

Pull anything nearby out of range next: rugs, boxes, electronics, furniture. Wet insulation up in the attic keeps feeding moisture back down into the ceiling long after the bucket stops filling, so if you can reach it without stepping past the drip zone, pull the soaked batts aside so they stop dripping onto the drywall below.

Relieve A Ceiling Bulge

A bulge or sagging patch of drywall means water has pooled above it, and that section can give way on its own without warning. A small, deliberate ceiling bulge relief hole, punched with a screwdriver into the lowest point of the sag, lets the pooled water out in a controlled stream instead of a sudden collapse onto the floor or furniture below.

Set the bucket directly under that spot first, since the release is faster than most people expect once the hole opens. Before you touch the ceiling, flip the electrical shutoff at the panel for any circuit running near the wet area or fixture. Water finding a light fixture or outlet is a real hazard, not a small one.

Photograph, Then Stop

Before anything else gets moved, photograph it. Wide shots of the room showing where the stain sits, close shots of the ceiling itself, the bucket and the drip, anything on the floor that got wet, and the date on every one. If a window shows the weather outside, better still. This is not paperwork for its own sake: an insurance claim is paid on damage tied to a specific event, and once the ceiling has been dried out and the leak closed, the only record left is what you took. Two minutes with a phone is worth more later than any description over the phone.

Then stop, and treat that as the do-not-climb rule: no trip onto the roof yourself, wet or dry, day or night. A roof holding rain or dew is slick even on a low slope, and finding the actual source takes a dry surface and daylight anyway. What you're aiming for is a temporary dry-in, and that's a job for someone trained to walk that surface safely.