textproduct: Grand Forks

KEY MESSAGES

- Cooler to start the week with highs in the 40s and 50s before 60s and 70s return Thursday onwards.

..Synopsis

A shortwave will dig around Hudson Bay troughing this evening into eastern North Dakota/Minnesota with a cold front dropping temps from todays 70s to 40s and 50s for Monday highs. Tuesday will the cold day of the week with highs only in the 40s as the core of the 700mb air moves overhead with temps in the -16 to -18C range (basically arctic by May standards). Could see showers linger behind the front Monday and Tuesday but accumulations will be minimal if any. Riding then starts to build back in through the remainder of the week with highs slowly climbing back into the 50s and 60s by Thur/Fri and even some 70s by next weekend in the south. With these increasing temps will once again come the chance for near critical to critical fire weather but with a lack of signal from HDWI and ongoing green-up for most will not focus on that too much just yet.

-Current Red Flag/SPS

Early day concerns about a deeply mixed boundary layer with winds being efficiently transported to the surface leading to more widespread red flag conditions are being quelled. Winds east of the ND/MN state border are remaining manageable at 10-15 mph with gusts occasionally over 20 mph (RH does remain and widely 22-27%) so SPS seems to be reasonable. Further west across ND RH is similar, though winds are slightly stronger at 15-20 mph with gusts to 30 mph. Overall this is currently marginal RFW conditions for ND but as RH drops another 3-5 points to near 20% this afternoon RFW will become an increasingly correct decision.

- Rain tonight

As a cold front rolls south tonight a few showers are expected though they will have to overcome the preceding deeply mixed and dry boundary layer. Despite this dry air hindrance hi-res ensembles like the HREF and RRFS both show high probs for areas from Hallock to the Red Lakes to see > 0.10". Most areas outside this will only see a shower or two and maybe a couple hundredths from them. Overall while it will be a "wetting rain" it wont do much to quell fire weather concerns later in the week.

Additional chances for critical fire weather conditions arise later this week. Persistent northwesterly flow continues to contribute to downsloping and dry airmasses over our region, so days with increasing temperatures will bring an increased risk for critical fire conditions. The main question marks will be wind speeds which do appear likely to meet thresholds of concern for fire late next week with fuel status also remaining critical. ERC percentiles are still largely high though HRB is beginning to respond to green-up so fire spread may become inhibited. At this time, Thursday and Friday appear to have the greatest likelihood for critical fire weather conditions.

AVIATION /18Z TAFS THROUGH 18Z TUESDAY/

Issued at 1217 PM CDT Mon May 4 2026

Patchy MVFR as afternoon strato-CU continually develop and drift SE. Have seen occasional cigs as low as 2000-2500 but most are 3500+ leading to mostly VFR. These should only increase with sustained cold air advection and increasing BL depth. Winds gusting near 30kts but only occasionally over 30kts with the window for any gusts over 30kts really through about 21z or so. otherwise NW at 20kts gusting 25-28kts this afternoon. Winds die off tonight before increasing around 15z tomorrow. Scattered showers as well this afternoon but confidence in near zero in timing/placement therefore went with VCSH for all sites. Would have gone prob30 but coverage is only about 20% of the area thus not quite high enough to do that. Just know there is a 90+ % chance of seeing a shower at some point in the next 8 hours.

FGF WATCHES/WARNINGS/ADVISORIES

ND...None. MN...None.