textproduct: Grand Forks

KEY MESSAGES

- Chances for strong to severe storms tonight and Tuesday night in southeast North Dakota.

- Seasonable weather with daily highs in the 70s and low 80s this week.

..Synopsis

Currently a very elongated ridge exists across the southern CONUS with zonal to WNW mid level flow in the northern CONUS. As we progress through the week ridging over the four corners into Texas panhandle will amplify at the same time PNW troughing begins to turn flow more zonal over us as the ridge gets pushed east. By Thursday SW flow looks to dominate the western CONUS bringing pacific moisture over the Rockies with embedded shortwaves. Certainly still differences remaining across clusters but the potential for a wet late week/weekend looks to be increasing. The current placement of synoptic features would more heavily favor southern areas for a soaking rain but even then it looks to only be a quarter to half inch (locally 1" perhaps) from Friday through Saturday.

- Severe threat today

While parts of southeast North Dakota are outlooked for this evening the main risk looks to stay well south of the area into South Dakota as a potential MCS develops amid a seasonably moist and unstable airmass with dewpoints in the low 70s across much of the Missouri river corridor in South Dakota. Further north towards Bismarck dewpoints should still manage to climb into the mid to upper 60s though this will only allow for 2000-2500 MUCAPE compared to the 3000-3500 further south with shear relatively equal across the warm sector. Given cloud layer shear approaching or even exceeding 70kts and DCAPE in excess of 1300 j/kg upscale growth seems to be the likely storm mode with an initial window for large hail and a few tornadoes possible in South Dakota. Should storms clip our area the thought is upscale growth would already be underway and winds up to 60mph would be the primary threat.

- Severe threat Tuesday

On Tuesday parts of southeast North Dakota are once again outlooked in a marginal risk (level 1 out of 5) for large hail and damaging wind gusts. The primary initiating boundary looks to be more so in South Dakota as a cold front moves southeast with no defined waves aloft for large scale forcing. This will increase the uncertainty in location of storms due to the subtle nature of the forcing but with around 2000 MLCAPE along and south of I-94 and eff shear of 40- 50kts, rotating storms are certainly possible. Perhaps we simply reach convective Ts in the mid 80s for some places in southeast North Dakota but lingering smoke aloft could chop a few degrees off our heating potential preventing that as well. Overall marginal seems to be the right call here with an equal risk for hail to the size of ping pongs (1.5") and wind gusts to 60 mph with any storms that do form.

AVIATION /18Z TAFS THROUGH 18Z TUESDAY/

Issued at 1205 PM CDT Mon Aug 10 2026

A few showers and thunderstorms remain across north central and north east North Dakota this afternoon but are failing to impact any TAF sites this time with DVL the only site really under any sort of threat today (less than 30% chance). Skies otherwise partly to mostly cloudy with ceilings anywhere from 6000-10000... in other words VFR. Winds mostly calm but some spots are still seeing winds of 5-10kts. Overall another a low impact forecast for operations.

FGF WATCHES/WARNINGS/ADVISORIES

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