textproduct: Grand Forks

KEY MESSAGES

- Occasional light snow today into Friday. Additional accumulations up to 1 inch.

- Low chance for winter impacts next early next week.

..Synopsis

A longwave trough is currently in place across much of the CONUS with the main jet stream displaced to the south along the Mexico border and gulf coast states. There are a few embedded waves within this trough and minimal steering flow to get them quickly moving anywhere thus the lingering impacts of our system that started bringing rain back on Tuesday. Current guidance wants to bring the low centered off to our east in the MN arrowhead back to the northwest into the Lake Winnipeg area likely prolonging our light snow. As the low and trough in general continue to fill in over the next 48 hours western riding will begin to regain its dominance bringing a return to NW flow aloft by Saturday evening. This will usher in colder air along with a more predictable pattern from a synoptic standpoint. The next wave of note that looks to bring perception to the northern plains comes Tuesday amid mostly zonal flow atop the ridge.

- Today/Tomorrow

As the low continues to retrograde N/NW through the next 2 days within the parent trough it will slowly continue to weaken but differential temperature advection will likely be enough to maintain the baroclinic zone over us with the deformation zone maintaining a source of weak lift. That said with decreasing moisture to squeeze out and lift generally on a weakening trend only nuisance snow is expected from here on with a trace to couple tenths for most and up to an inch for those lucky few that see more stationary banding with which we've seen snow rates up to 0.25 to 0.5"/hr this morning. Main impacts remain the great dig for everyone's driveways as we try to dig out the concrete that was the first half of the system. At least the second half was much more fluffy with the wrap around with thankfully limited winds then and now going forward in the forecast creating a low concern for widespread drifting/blowing snow.

- Weekend cooldown

Arctic high pressure settles over the Canadian prairies for Friday and the weekend with 850mb temps consistently in the mid minus teens. The main concern for any headlines will be Sunday and Monday with cold weather advisory criteria of -30 within the realm of whats possible still but maybe not favored. Current long range guidance is only showing a 10-20% chance to meet this threshold but would imagine the goes up slightly as ensemble members spatially converge on the location of the cold air mass. Nevertheless it will be a notable cool down with lows back below zero and highs in the single digits and teens.

- Early week system

Definitely lower confidence in this system than there could be with differences in the amplitude of the ridge and the timing of the wave coming across it but the general idea seems to be another mainly west to east tracking wave along a baroclinic zone with some FGEN to lead to temporarily heavier rates. Current guidance is pretty pessimistic but looking at individual members those that show a wave have 1-3" of snow, but a wide range of tracks and timing still lead to the overall signal being washed out in the ensembles. 1-3" falling in a 12-18 hour period fits well with the conceptual model but will have to wait for guidance to come into agreement before going into details about associated impacts. While track confidence remains very low odds certainly favor more northern areas for snow vs areas towards SD or WC MN.

AVIATION /12Z TAFS THROUGH 12Z FRIDAY/

Issued at 1058 AM CST Thu Feb 19 2026

MVFR ceilings seem to be most common across the area but there are a few pockets in the IFR range. Over the next 18 hours most remain MVFR bouncing up and down across the 2k mark but vis is slightly higher confidence is snow is seldomly heavy enough to drive it below 1SM and when its not occuring at all VIS is obviously above 6SM so mainly 1-3SM within snow and >5SM without. Confidence in timing of snow impacting taf sites unfortunately remains low through the period but highest snow chances remain now to 12z Friday.

FGF WATCHES/WARNINGS/ADVISORIES

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