textproduct: Grand Forks

KEY MESSAGES

- Widespread rain tonight with another round Monday night bringing a two day total of a quarter to half inch for nearly all areas.

UPDATE

Issued at 640 PM CDT Sun May 17 2026

Severe potential continues to dwindle in our southeast (Wilkin, Grant, Ottertail, Wadena counties) with a small hail threat the main concern as of now through about 10-11pm. Could see some hail up to dime size but even that feels like a stretch. IN OTHER NEWS ITS RAINING. For the first time since mid to late April for most we are seeing rain totals over a quarter inch which should immensely help to put a damper on blowing dust and fire danger.

..SEVERE POTENTIAL TODAY

Surface analysis this afternoon shows the warm front roughly situated just north of Sioux Falls. This has allowed intense isentropic ascent over our area, bringing some solid moisture content to the region. This warm front remains expected to propagate northward this afternoon and bringing surface moisture with it. CAM guidance continues to generally prog the surface instability south of our CWA, barely scraping Grant County. Per HREF probabilities, there is only a 10% chance to even see 500 J/kg of SCAPE. MUCAPE also is very closely attached to this warm front and shares similar probabilities as a result. Having said that, shear associated with the front is rather strong, approaching 50+ knots. There will be a brief window this evening (likely at most 1-2 hours) wherein severe convection may impact our west-central Minnesota counties. Any severe convection will most likely be hail as storms are likely to be elevated as storm relative winds in the 0-2km layer are most likely to be due easterly, so it will be difficult to ingest warmer air to the south. If surface-based convection arises, tornadoes can't be ruled out but again this is very unlikely at this time and would require very strong propagation northward in the warm front. The window of severe thunderstorms ends roughly close to midnight at the latest, but should generally be out of the area by 8-10 PM CDT.

AVIATION /00Z TAFS THROUGH 00Z TUESDAY/

Issued at 640 PM CDT Sun May 17 2026

Sites Are all MVFR to VFR and those that are still VFR will fall to MVFR by 02z. Rain is only locally driving visibility impacts to 2-5sm otherwise generally P6SM. CIGs will slowly fall tonight area wide to 500 to 1500ft with DVL having at least a 20% chance to fall into IFR below 500ft. Winds while locally gusting up to 15kts currently will die off tonight becoming northerly at 5-10kts through the remainder of the period.

FGF WATCHES/WARNINGS/ADVISORIES

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