textproduct: Twin Cities

KEY MESSAGES

- Above normal temperatures persist through early next week, with highs in the 40s/50s through Tuesday before colder temperatures return mid-week.

- Today's high temperatures will have MSP, STC, and EAU all approaching 90+ year old records.

- Next chance at widespread precipitation comes Tuesday night/Wednesday. A band of heavy, wet snow is likely with this system, though how far north in MN/WI this snow falls is still uncertain.

DISCUSSION

Issued at 306 AM CST Sat Feb 14 2026

You are forgiven if when looking at temperatures at 3am this morning you thought it was St. Patrick's Day, not St. Valentine's Day. It was still above freezing for much of the region south of I-94, with lows south of I-94 this morning likely to stay above our normal highs. To the south, there's an h5 trough working across New Mexico, with showers and thunderstorms spreading east across the central and southern Plains. This system will eject off to the east, with nothing more than some thin high clouds expected across southern MN. With little change in the airmass we had over us on Friday, we're expecting highs to warm another degree or two over what we saw on Friday. MSP should have no trouble breaking the record high for today (50). The 49 at EAU will be within reach, while the 52 at STC may be just out of reach for today. When you get southwest of the MN River, we should see several sites top 60 today. This mild airmass will remain in place until a weak (and dry) cold front slips across the area Sunday night. This means similar mild highs in the upper 40s to lowers 60s (northeast to southwest) will happen Sunday as well, though record highs take a step up on Sunday and are looking safe. The only weather concern for Sunday will be the potential for some patchy fog with light winds. However, with how warm we'll be getting on Saturday, we'll likely have to have temperatures Saturday night drop some 30+ degrees from the afternoon highs in order to see fog Sunday morning.

Things do begin to change next week as the western trough begins to beat down the central CONUS ridge. The first wave coming out of the western trough will be moving across the northern Plains Tuesday and into the upper MS Valley on Wednesday. With this upper low will be a surface low tracking from SoDak into southern MN. South of the low track, a dry slot will limit precip totals, with temepratures in the 40s (and even 50s) keeping things as rain. North of the low track and warm front, it will be very heavy and wet snow. A very intense east- west band of precip will develop north of the warm front/dry slot, with the mean PWAT on the EPS progged to be up around 300% of normal. QPF in the heaviest band of precipitation could potentially exceed the average liquid precip for the entire month of February at MSP (0.87"). Looking at EPS snow probabilities, this heavy snowband is favored across Lake Superior and northern MN into northern NoDak. The AI version of the EPS though is colder than the traditional EPS and has the heavy snow across central WI into central MN. The NBM right now favors the northern/warmer EPS solution with the heavy snow across northern MN, but there's still time for this to move and definitely bears watching.

For the end of next week, we'll still have a mean trough to our west over the Rockies, with another wave likely to head out across the Plains to end next week right on the heels of the midweek system. It will be colder for this second wave, which means p-type would most likely fall in the snow bin. However, there's lots of spread in the ensembles with how far north this second wave goes and the NBMs broad brushed 20-40 PoPs Thursday night into Friday fits well with the spread we're seeing with the models right now. To sum it up, the snowfall ceiling for next week right now is rather high, but the the floor also sits down close to zero, so snow lovers shouldn't be getting their hopes up too much yet, though the farther away you can get from Iowa, the better chance you see winter come back in a big way.

AVIATION /12Z TAFS THROUGH 12Z SUNDAY/

Issued at 508 AM CST Sat Feb 14 2026

Only weather concern this period will be the threat for morning fog. Fog this morning has been of the BR variety and will be gone by 14z, with mainly clear skies. Winds will be light today (under 10 kts), though a weak boundary will slide across the area this afternoon, which will push directions over to the W-NW. RAP soundings for central MN into western WI tonight are classic fog soundings. However, RAP soundings also show a batch of 120-150 clouds moving through tonight as well, which brings in a good deal of uncertainty with the extent of fog we will see. With that said, RAP sounding from central MN into western WI are classic dense fog soundings and if we don't see much in the way of mid clouds tonight, we'll end up with much more extensive fog than we're seeing this morning.

KMSP...No concerns for MSP, with any fog Sunday morning happening outside of the Twin Cities metro.

/OUTLOOK FOR KMSP/ SUN...VFR. Wind W 5 kts becoming S late. MON...VFR. Wind S 5-10 kts becoming NE. TUE...VFR. Chc MVFR/-RA late. Wind E 10-20 kts.

CLIMATE

Issued at 228 PM CST Wed Feb 11 2026

Record high temperatures for February 13th through 17th can be found in the table below. Period of records began: MPX (1996), MSP (1872), STC (1894), EAU (1893).

SAT SUN MON TUE 2/14 2/15 2/16 2/17

MPX 46 (2002) 45 (1999) 54 (2011) 62 (2017) MSP 50 (1882) 63 (1921) 60 (1981) 63 (2017) STC 52 (1921) 55 (1921) 53 (1981) 59 (2017) EAU 49 (1934) 58 (1921) 58 (1931) 55 (1981)

MPX WATCHES/WARNINGS/ADVISORIES

MN...None. WI...None.