textproduct: Bismarck

KEY MESSAGES

- Snow and blowing snow with significantly reduced visibility late this evening in the James River Valley.

- Decreasing winds tonight, but still cold with lows around 5 to 15 below zero and wind chills around 20 to 35 below zero.

- Warming trend to start the work week, with highs mainly in the 30s across western and central North Dakota by Tuesday. Then a large spread in temperatures from northeast to southwest is forecast for mid to late week.

- A clipper system will bring low to medium chances for snow to mainly northwest and central North Dakota Tuesday night into Wednesday.

UPDATE

Issued at 1200 AM CST Mon Dec 29 2025

Falling snow has broadly ended across western and central North Dakota as the associated low stratus exits to the south of the forecast area. With this, visibility has begun to rapidly improve across south central North Dakota into the southern James River Valley, though gusty northwest winds will continue to promote periods of visibility reductions due to patchy blowing snow through the early morning period. Thus, we will let the Winter Weather Advisory expire on time at midnight CST. Otherwise, wind chills across the north and the northern James River Valley have begun to drop as low 25 to 30 below zero. With this update, have added Kidder and Stutsman counties to the Cold Weather Advisory. Otherwise, no adjustments to the forecast were made at this time, as it broadly remains on track.

UPDATE Issued at 922 PM CST Sun Dec 28 2025

Radar, satellite, and surface observations show falling snow quickly ending to the south and east of Bismarck. But winds trailing the snowfall remain strong, with gusts near 45 mph still being reported at Jamestown, and visibility as low as half a mile from blowing snow was still being reported within the last hour at Cooperstown, just outside of our forecast area. Based on the current conditions and in collaboration with NWS Grand Forks, we have extended the Winter Weather Advisory until midnight for Foster through Dickey and Logan and McIntosh Counties.

Another minor headline change for this update was to move up the start time of the north central segment of the Cold Weather Advisory to now, also in collaboration with NWS Grand Forks. Surface observations show several locations already approaching winds chills of 30 below zero across all of northern North Dakota.

UPDATE Issued at 621 PM CST Sun Dec 28 2025

The Wind Advisory was allowed to expire on time at 4 PM MST. All other products remain in good shape. Falling snow will end from northwest to southeast through the evening. The remaining snowfall should be very light, although recent radar imagery shows some interesting banding signatures near Bismarck, and can confirm from visual observation there are larger dendrites/ aggregates. The strong northwest winds will also gradually diminish through tonight from northwest to southeast, but will lag behind the ending of the falling snow, which could result in a later end time of impactful blowing and drifting snow.

DISCUSSION

Issued at 223 PM CST Sun Dec 28 2025

Currently, Light snow continues to fall across much of central ND as the deformation zone from this system drops south through the area. Thus we will keep the Winter Weather Advisory in place, which is currently expected to expire at 9 PM CDT. In the far southwest and south central, sustained wind speeds are still around 30 mph with recent gusts to 40 mph at Hettinger, Bowman and in Sioux county. The wind advisory is forecast to expire at 5 PM and think it should be able to be let go, but will let the evening shift make that decision based on latest observations and guidance. If it were extended, would think it would only be for an hour or two.

We have cancelled the Cold Weather Advisory for much of southwest and west central ND. However, in the northwest we extended the Advisory through 9 AM Monday. Current wind chills are 25 to 30 below, and are forecast to drop into Advisory criteria this evening. We also added a group of counties in the north central and into the northern James River Valley, but we won't start the advisory for these counties until late this evening. These counties will also run through 9 AM Monday.

We begin a quick warmup on Monday, with temperatures climbing into the lower 30s over southwest ND, but most areas will remain in the teens and lower 20s. It will not be windy on Monday so it will feel a lot closer to the actual air temperature than it did today. A clipper system tracking from central Saskatchewan into southern Manitoba will drag a warm front through the forecast area Monday evening and we see a non-diurnal temperature curve Monday night with temperatures steady or rising through the night. Then on Tuesday as the clipper tracks into the Great Lakes region a backdoor cold front pushes westward, setting up a pretty tight northwest to southeast baroclinic zone over central into eastern ND. Exactly where the baroclinic zone ends up and where the impulse moving through the northwest tracks will determine where we may see some accumulating snow. Based on the FG and QG forcing with good lapse rates, there could be some snow bands that set up, but this also looks to be a progressive system, so wouldn't expect any one area would see long residence time with ideal forcing. At this time NBM guidance is suggesting medium probabilities for an inch or more of snow around the Turtle Mountains area and possibly into the northern James River Valley. Low probabilities for 2 or more inches of snow is confined to mainly the Turtle Mountains area. With the undulating baroclinic zone, and a progressive broad upper level flow, this is a low predictable event at this time. We'll see how things change (or not) as we get closer to mid week.

The main weather story going forward is the continued low predictability of weather systems given the progressive northwest upper level flow and the baroclinic zone fluctuating over the forecast area. The uncertainty in temperatures is rather impressive with Bismarck showing basically a 15-20 degree spread between the 25th and 75th percentile for Max temperature from Wednesday December 31st through next Wednesday, January 7th. Min temperature spreads are not quite as impressive, but I don't recall a longer stretch of low predictable temperatures since the inception of the ensemble NBM viewer.

AVIATION /06Z TAFS THROUGH 06Z TUESDAY/

Issued at 1200 AM CST Mon Dec 29 2025

Low ceilings and visibilities associated with blowing snow across south central and eastern North Dakota should continue to gradually improve overnight. VFR conditions are otherwise anticipated through the forecast period. Strong northwest winds will continue to relax through the night, becoming west to southwest around 5-10 kts on Monday.

BIS WATCHES/WARNINGS/ADVISORIES

Cold Weather Advisory until 9 AM CST Monday for NDZ001>005- 009>013-022-023-025.