textproduct: Grand Forks

KEY MESSAGES

- Light falling snow and elevated wind gusts up to 35 mph Sunday will bring some sparse blowing snow.

- 30% chance for at least 1" of snow area wide across 2 systems between Tuesday and Thursday. However uncertainty in the tracks leads to low confidence in the location and scale impacts.

..Synopsis

Weak upper flow will persist through the evening before the main branch of the subtropical jet inches north tonight to finally kicks this upper low out of the region. With this a weak shortwave currently noted in water vapor near Saskatoon will slide south through the NW flow across eastern North Dakota tonight bringing increased lift amid saturated low level profiles, increasing chances for some light snow. Along with this is also some weak pressure advection in the morning and a tightened pressure gradient in the afternoon which may drive HCR development with gusts topping 30 mph in the afternoon. A few clipper type waves then look to move through Tuesday and Wednesday but ensembles still show a large variance in the timing and tracks decreasing confidence in impacts.

- Today/Tomorrow

While skies are currently mostly clear the incoming wave should provide support for increasing stratus tonight with the 850-700mb layer largely saturated across the area and some weak isentropic ascent potentially enough to force out some light snow tomorrow. Combine this with a favorably steep boundary layer and 925mb winds nearing 30kts particularly in the Valley and east and it could be a sneaky HCR day with low end blowing/drifting snow impacts as the current snowpack remains extremely blowable.

Hitting Cold Weather Advisory criteria is also looking less likely with a 40% chance from Roseau south to Thief and west across areas north of HWY 2 tonight. Not that it wont still be chilly with Sunday morning wind chills in the -20 to -25 range but not quite advisory worthy. Cold again Monday morning with lows in the minus teens for more northern areas but lighter winds with shortwave ridging overhead will lead to wind chills again only in the -20 to -25 range.

- Tuesday to Thursday

Looking at individual ensemble stamps there is still the signal for the initial Tuesday wave to bring a relatively narrow swath of 1-3" somewhere likely favoring areas north of HWY 2 with the following wave more in T-2" range favoring areas south of HWY 200. So overall moderate chances for at least some snowfall across most of the area over the days 3-5 period but accumulations for any given location would be unlikely to exceed 2-3" at the max. Thus confidence in impacts remains low given the mixed bag of potential tracks currently.

AVIATION /18Z TAFS THROUGH 18Z SUNDAY/

Issued at 1116 AM CST Sat Feb 21 2026

Skies are mostly clear currently with VFR ceilings under the few pockets of clouds that do exist. Through the afternoon we should see a developing stratus deck in the high MVFR territory and a few HCR's bringing snow showers across the Valley and areas of northwest Minnesota through Sunday morning. With the steep lapse rates will be stronger gusts near 20kts Sunday afternoon which may lead to some blowing snow especially for FAR and GFK.

FGF WATCHES/WARNINGS/ADVISORIES

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