textproduct: Grand Forks

KEY MESSAGES

- Slightly cooler and drier through tomorrow before warmer temperatures and shower/thunderstorm return for 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 THURSDAY/

Issued at 1230 PM CDT Wed Aug 26 2026

Stratus continues to hang on in parts of western MN, including at KTVF and KBJI. MVFR conditions should continue for a bit longer but satellite trends show scattering out should occur in the next hour or two. VFR conditions for the rest of the period, can't completely rule out some patchy ground fog tomorrow morning but not a strong enough signal to include in the TAFs. Winds that are gusting from the northwest to 20 kts at times this afternoon will drop down this evening below 12 kts, then become light and variable.

FGF WATCHES/WARNINGS/ADVISORIES

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