textproduct: Aberdeen

KEY MESSAGES

- Near record temperatures today with highs in the 60s to around 70.

- High to very high grassland fire danger across central/north central SD.

- Less confidence in regards to snow potential early next week. Now down to a 30-50% chance for moisture.

DISCUSSION

Issued at 125 AM CST Sun Mar 8 2026

Light rain showers continue to drift down out of North Dakota from a mid level cloud deck. Will maintain low POPs for the next few hours but anticipating little more than sprinkles. Focus shifts to todays temperatures and fire weather threat.

Low level flow continues to remain out of the west southwest. There is a north south gradient with a low up in northeast MT/northwest ND and high pressure to the south, with a gradient of about 6-8 mb across the state (north to south). 850mb temperatures remain a standard deviation above climo under a warm advection regime. A favorable mixing direction (westerlies) will, like yesterday, mix winds down from around 750mb out west and around 800mb in the east. BUFKIT mixed winds thus are around 30+ kts, with the NBM output just a tick above yesterdays intensity.

Looking over how NBM faired yesterday in regards to dewpoints and minimum humidity, its hard to argue going much below NBM's 50th percentiles/average when the previous days numbers were fairly good across the Missouri valley, albeit a little too high/moist along and east of the James valley. That means minimum humidity for the day should also remain above Red Flag criteria, though as always there will be spots here and there that will probably overachieve. Still, will have conditions that result in High/Very High fire danger west of the James valley. This fire danger environment is also complicated by a front tonight, moving down from North Dakota and despite rapidly falling temperatures the change in wind direction with a brief uptick in winds could create issues for any firefighting activities.

Still looking at a weak northern stream system with a subtle mid level warm advection/band of precipitation along the ND/SD state line for late Monday/early Tuesday. NBM 25th/75th spread and average have both continued to drop, though the Canadian and NAM still indicate some sort of banded feature or intermittent banding along/north of a mid level thermal gradient.

We remain on the cold side of the arctic front for much of next week. A strong clipper late in the week will up-end this with both a strong warm advection push Thursday followed by another surge in arctic/Canadian air in its wake for Friday/Saturday. The EC and GFS both have a strong low, with a central pressure around 988-87mb, so high wind potential also exists.

AVIATION /06Z TAFS THROUGH 06Z TUESDAY/

Issued at 1129 PM CST Sat Mar 7 2026

Terminals KABR,KATY,KPIR,KMBG

VFR conditions will a sprinkle or two at KABR/KATY. LLWS is ongoing and will persist for another hour or two.

ABR WATCHES/WARNINGS/ADVISORIES

SD...None. MN...None.