textproduct: Grand Forks

KEY MESSAGES

- Slightly cooler and drier today before warmer temperatures and shower and thunderstorm chances return late Friday and the weekend.

DISCUSSION

Issued at 229 PM CDT Wed Aug 26 2026

Upper troughing continues to move off into the Great Lakes, leaving the Northern Plains under northwesterly flow aloft tonight with surface high pressure. With decreasing clouds tonight and light winds, can't completely rule out some patchy ground fog although the HREF probabilities of visibility less than 1 mile is minimal. Upper ridging builds back into the Western Plains late tomorrow, with most models agreeing on a weak shortwave coming over top of the ridge on Friday. Mean CAPE values look fairly unimpressive Friday except in our far southwestern counties. A few of the machine learning solutions have some probability of severe impacts in portions of our west on Friday, but some tend to run a bit more bullish than reality, so will hold off messaging but continue to monitor.

With the upper ridge coming down and southwesterly flow aloft setting up until a trough comes through the international border region Monday, it looks like there will be an active pattern into the weekend. At least some instability according to the NBM mean CAPE, but spread among the members is almost as much as the mean values, 500-1000 J/kg. Predictability is too low to message any severe impacts at this point but chances look pretty good for showers and thunderstorms given the forcing and time of year for Friday and the weekend. Ensemble means and clusters have mostly southwesterly flow aloft into next week, so expect warmer than average temperatures and periodic precip chances to continue.

AVIATION /18Z TAFS THROUGH 18Z FRIDAY/

Issued at 1221 PM CDT Thu Aug 27 2026

VFR conditions for now and throughout the period. Some cumulus developing near KBJI and some of the other TAF sites but bases are above 3000 ft and the clouds will dissipate around sunset. Winds that are northeast to northwest with some gusts up to 20 kts at times will become light and variable this evening. Eventually, winds will shift around to the southeast, picking up on the ND side of the river and the more western parts of the forecast area seeing some gusts up to 20 kts at the end of the period.

FGF WATCHES/WARNINGS/ADVISORIES

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