textproduct: Grand Forks

KEY MESSAGES

- Blizzard impacts will slowly improve through the overnight hours.

- Wind chills below -30 in northeast North Dakota and the northern RRV late tonight/early Monday.

UPDATE

Issued at 1144 PM CST Sun Dec 28 2025

The Blizzard Warning has been trimmed to include the immediate Red River Valley, and especially keeping counties on the Minnesota side. This is due to ongoing observations from Crookston up through just south of Donaldson that indicate ongoing blizzard conditions. This is not unheard of as it is typical for this corridor to continue while improvements are ongoing in the North Dakota side of the valley. Further south, falling snow and increased winds are continually contributing to whiteout conditions, although there is a marked improvement. Zones removed from the blizzard warning will still likely experience blowing snow, but predominant blizzard conditions have fallen well below warning thresholds in probability and coverage. While headlines go until 12z in the Red River Valley, it seems likely that early expiration is on the table, but this will depend on how long winds stick around after midnight.

UPDATE Issued at 946 PM CST Sun Dec 28 2025

While surface observation sites indicate some improvement, webcams and reports continue to indicate ongoing blizzard conditions in open country within the Red River Valley. Having said that, the pressure gradient is starting to diminish so we should start to see winds die down, particularly in the northern valley. While the Blizzard Warning will remain in effect, it does appear likely that we will be able to downgrade the northern valley in the next 1-2 hours to a Winter Weather Advisory.

Further west, falling snow has ended and skies are beginning to clear in the Devils Lake Basin. Temperatures have fallen quite a bit and wind chills are already hitting Cold Weather Advisory criteria, so the northern tier of the current advisory was changed to start immediately. The Winter Weather Advisories will remain in effect until falling snow ends.

UPDATE Issued at 647 PM CST Sun Dec 28 2025

Snowfall will continue to push away this evening. Blizzard impacts have been ongoing in some locations, although this is in mainly rural areas and not persistent. Winds are beginning to increase on the backside of this low, so blowing snow impacts should continue. Right now, there is the potential for early downgrade/cancellation of the ongoing Blizzard Warning, but we do want to see how the new snowpack responds to increasing winds first. Regardless, travel impacts will continue through the evening and overnight hours.

..Synopsis

There is strong ensemble agreement through mid week before larger differences start to arise in clusters on the amplitude of western ridging and its downstream impacts on the steering flow aloft. In the short term there is obviously the strong low that can be noted across the northern plains/great lakes bringing widespread accumulating snow and blizzard impacts tonight. Beyond this system is cooler temps through the week with ridging to our west across the high plains putting us in the strike zone for open wave clipper activity. Confidence is low in the scope of impacts for two noted waves; one Tuesday more to our east affecting western Lake Superior and a second one Wednesday that could bring some accumulating snow and elevated winds. Simply put, it looks to remain active after todays storm with at least chances for more snow. Later in the period scenarios become a broad range with hybrid low type action (stronger systems like todays) or clipper type activity. This will obviously have to be monitored as we get later in the period.

-Today

As the upper low continues to drift southeast now centered in central South Dakota broad divergence in the northeast quadrant of the low and favorable positive vorticity advection in combination with a deeply saturated DGZ and pockets of FGEN from 850-700mb are leading to a broad swath of accumulating snow across the northern plains today/tonight. With reports already topping 2-4" in places like Devils Lake and Grand Forks as of noon and another 1-2" for those locations along with 3-5" of additional snow along and south of HWY 200 there will certainly be a bounty of new snow to blow around this afternoon. As the low continues to drift to the southeast the core of the pressure gradient moves across the valley leading to a slight uptick in winds this afternoon from the current gusts of 30-35 to 35-40 mph with widespread blizzard to near blizzard conditions expected. 12z HREF shows a 100% probability for gusts greater than 35 mph from 4pm to midnight for most areas and a 60-80% chance for gusts over 40 mph during that period. It was always in the forecast that this wouldn't be the same magnitude blizzard we had 10 or so days ago but it is turning out to be much more marginal than originally expected. Overall there is still enough confidence to retain the current headlines but can see why people will say we might have cried wolf on this looking only from an impacts perspective.

- Monday

During the recovery from this event there is high confidence in cold temps/wind chills. Widespread wind chills in the -20s for all with some areas favored to fall into the -30 to -35 range thus meeting cold weather advisory thresholds. Should be only for a short duration (between 6pm today to 9am Monday) but in combination with the winter storm could pose an extra level of impact to travelers that are unprepared.

- Tuesday

A weak clipper looks to move through late Tuesday night into the day on Wednesday bringing a quick shot of light snow 1-2" (60% chance for 1" and 40% for 2") mainly affecting parts of northeast North Dakota into west central Minnesota and bringing some patchy blowing snow Wednesday morning as temps fall behind the attendant cold front.

AVIATION /06Z TAFS THROUGH 06Z TUESDAY/

Issued at 1144 PM CST Sun Dec 28 2025

Conditions will continue to improve slowly after 06z, eventually becoming VFR for all TAF sites with winds slowly diminishing to below 10 knots after 18z. Blowing snow may continue to periodically drop visibilities to MVFR or IFR after the main improvements, but this should no longer be an issue after 18z at the latest for all TAF sites. Low aviation impacts are expected thereafter with VFR and light winds.

FGF WATCHES/WARNINGS/ADVISORIES

ND...Blizzard Warning until 6 AM CST Monday for NDZ030-039-053. Cold Weather Advisory until 9 AM CST Monday for NDZ006>008- 014>016-024-026-027-054. Cold Weather Advisory until 9 AM CST Monday for NDZ028>030-038- 039. Winter Weather Advisory until 6 AM CST Monday for NDZ008-016- 027-029. Winter Weather Advisory until 3 AM CST Monday for NDZ049-052. MN...Blizzard Warning until 6 AM CST Monday for MNZ001>003-007-029- 030-040. Cold Weather Advisory until 9 AM CST Monday for MNZ001-004-005- 007-008-013>016. Cold Weather Advisory until 9 AM CST Monday for MNZ002-003-022- 023-027>031-040. Winter Weather Advisory until 6 AM CST Monday for MNZ004- 013>015-022-027-031. Winter Weather Advisory until 3 AM CST Monday for MNZ008-009- 016-017-023-024-028-032.