textproduct: Grand Forks

KEY MESSAGES

- Light wintry mix or snow Christmas Day into the evening, with a 30 percent chance for advisory level impacts

- A system moves through the region this weekend, potentially bringing winter impacts. There is a 10 percent chance for warning level impacts, mainly from blowing snow.

UPDATE

Issued at 951 PM CST Tue Dec 23 2025

Impacts will remain quiet for the rest of the night. A weak wave is traversing the international border right now and may cause some snowfall in northwest Minnesota, but accumulations should remain negligible at best. Temperatures overnight will remain in the single digits to low teens, increasing as you head south.

UPDATE Issued at 651 PM CST Tue Dec 23 2025

Clouds continue to linger across the region this evening with pockets of flurries evident. Regardless of flurries, conditions will remain quiet overnight with limited winds and precipitation expected.

..Potential winter impacts this weekend

Ensemble guidance is starting to agree in at least some development of a stronger wave emanating out of the broader Pacific trough, deepening into the Great Lakes region, this weekend. While spread is high in synoptic evolution like track and strength of the eventual low pressure system, ensemble signals like ENS EFI is highlighting the potential for increased winds into our region, particularly Sunday.

Should this system deposit as little as 2 inches of snow with high winds over 35 mph, blowing snow impacts can be anticipated, including potential for blizzard conditions. This is a plausible scenario that could happen, however just as plausible is a scenario that results in little to no snow, with lesser winds. This would mitigate winter impacts during another potentially higher than average travel holiday period.

While the envelope of potential impacts is large, there is still much uncertainty that lowers confidence in potential impacts. Thus, there is currently a 10% chance for warning- level impacts.

AVIATION /06Z TAFS THROUGH 06Z THURSDAY/

Issued at 1116 PM CST Tue Dec 23 2025

A highly uncertain aviation forecast is in place for this TAF period. For tonight, mostly mid to high level clouds will continue to sit across much of the region with generally light winds slowly shifting to northerly as teh overnight goes on. Patchy fog may develop as you get further west but confidence is very low in this arising.

Things get tough to discern after 12z. It appears likely that as a front comes through tomorrow, stratus will accompany it. What makes things difficult is that the frontal boundary looks to stall sometime tomorrow. With the stratus deck with this, guidance ranges on ceilings from LIFR to VFR with no real coalescense around one mean. From a pattern recognition standpoint, generally expect at least MVFR ceilings tomorrow after 12z, and potentially lasting through the day. Most guidance keeps the dimensions of the stratus deck mainly in the vicinity of the front, so there is the chance that LIFR conditions arise but misses all 5 TAF sites.

Given the low certainty in ceilings, prevailing MVFR was put in the TAF for all TAF sites, but expect variability as certainty increases or decreases in ceilings. This may last through the end of the TAF period as well as the frontal boundary aloft will not be in a hurry to leave until late in the TAF period.

FGF WATCHES/WARNINGS/ADVISORIES

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