textproduct: Grand Forks

KEY MESSAGES

- Well above average highs Thursday afternoon with near critical fire weather.

- A narrow swath of snow is expected Thursday night/Friday morning but the exact location and ceiling of amounts remains uncertain.

..Synopsis

Current split flow aloft begins to transition to SW flow through Thursday afternoon as a PNW trough deepens and moves east into the northern plains by Friday evening. Along with this troughing will be preceding seasonally strong thermal ridging (>98th percentile Thursday evening) which will push Thursday high temps to near records but coming up a few degrees short for most. This also brings near critical fire danger due to minimum RH's of 25 to 30 though winds less than 30 mph will temper the threat, more on this below. Behind the heat on Thursday comes a strong cold front with temps crashing from the 70s/80s to 30s/40s for Friday bringing a chance for snow to the area. Ridging returns for the weekend with highs slowly rebounding by Sunday into the 40s for all with 50s/60s likely for next week.

- Thursday Heat/Fire Weather

With anomalously strong thermal ridging across southeast North Dakota and west central Minnesota up into the Red Lakes expect the warmest day of the year so far. Highs will widely reach from 70 to 80 from Valley City to the Red Lakes and points south. A few may top 80 but that only looks to be about a 10% chance from Lisbon to Wadena and south. With the warm temps RH will fall into the 25 to 35 percent range (1pm to 8pm) but winds are only expected to be southerly at 20kts gusting 30kts at the worst during these low RH periods (noon to 5pm) meaning there is a short 4-5 hour temporal overlap and even smaller spatial overlap (really just the southern Red River Valley). Overall this keeps us short of Red Flag Criteria but to enough support near critical messaging. HDWI does have the area of concern reaching the 90th percentile and and ERC in the mid 20s. Aberdeen to our south will have a Red Flag Warning in effect for tomorrow with conditions becoming more of the near critical variety in our far south. Wouldn't rule out sites meeting Red Flag conditions for a short duration but at this point a RFW does not seem warranted with an SPS in effect for the MN counties of concern. Still recommend caution if burning.

- Snow chances

Later in the day on Thursday the troughing moves more directly overhead with decent FGEN from 850-700mb and favorable temperature profiles for snow. Using lessons learned from this winter and looking at the EC AIFS ens the favored corridor for any accumulating snow will be from south central ND into the northern Red River Valley and far northwest MN. Overall there is a 50% chance for a quarter inch and 30% for a half inch or more which certainly supports more than nuisance amounts of snow. Guidance suites vary significantly on whether they keep it snow vs rain though. HREF snow probs are as high as 50% for a narrow 30-50 mile wide swath of 3 or more inches, whereas the NBM and REFS have barely a 20% chance for even 1 inch. Which is right you may ask? Looking at the WPC super ensemble there are of outliers that of course have 4" or more (very low probability) but the majority at any given point are 0-2" with most likely getting only a few tenths (narrow band of heavy snow with light snow on either side). Therefore there is still considerable uncertainty on where the band set up and even how much of it falls as snow but there is high confidence a band of 0.2 to 0.4" of QPF will fall somewhere. This brings at least a 30% chance for winter impacts with the potential for a winter weather advisory to be warranted by sometime tomorrow.

Later on in the period there is nothing that immediately grabs the attention for potential hazards but given the uncertainty that spring patterns can bring, with a range of hazards possible, it is unlikely to be truly quiet for an extended period of time.

AVIATION /18Z TAFS THROUGH 18Z THURSDAY/

Issued at 1222 PM CDT Wed Apr 15 2026

VFR through the period with a cold front working south into the area this evening/overnight. Winds veering slowly from the south to the the north then northeast by the end of the period. Winds south of the front remain south/SW and north/NE to the north of it. GFK and TVF will both be near the stalled front Thursday morning so wind directions are still relatively uncertain but tried to give a best guess at timing. Wind gusts on both sides of the front will be over 25kts Thursday afternoon.

CLIMATE

Issued at 217 PM CDT Wed Apr 15 2026

Record Maximum Temperatures:

April 17: KFAR: 82/1987 KPKD: 79/1987

FGF WATCHES/WARNINGS/ADVISORIES

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