textproduct: Twin Cities

KEY MESSAGES

- Typical March temperature roller coaster over the next 7 days. We go up today and Wednesday, start plunging Thursday, bottom out Friday, then warm back up over the weekend into early next week.

- Best chances for precipitation (rain) come Thursday morning and again to end March next Tuesday.

DISCUSSION

Issued at 213 AM CDT Tue Mar 24 2026

Temperatures have dropped very little overnight with persistent southerly winds blowing out ahead of slow moving frontal boundary that snakes from the Black Hills, northeast to just south of Grand Forks, then east across far northern MN. This front will sag south into central MN today, where it will get washed out as lee cyclogenesis commences in Montana, which will help sharpen a front along the Canadian border tonight into Wednesday. WAA doesn't really ramp up until tonight, so we get filtered sun and highs in the 50s today (about 10 degrees above normal), but then see another sizable jump up on Wednesday as the thermal ridge moves in ahead of the frontal boundary. As we saw over the weekend, these warm airmasses emanating from the western ridge tend to be rather mild, so did boost highs some from the NBM on Wednesday, with 70s getting clear up to the MN River, with another March 70 not out of the question for the Twin Cities.

Wednesday night into Thursday morning, that front will push through the area, with breezy northwest winds and falling temperatures expected during the day on Thursday. Just how long we can hold on to the milder airmass will determine just how warm we can get on Thursday before the colder Canadian airmass moves in. With this airmass change comes our best chance for precip this week, with a band of post-frontal fgen. This precipitation will have to fight dry low-level air to reach the ground, but with the main surface low moving out across Nebraska, we should be far enough north to get into what has been the active part of this weather pattern. Amounts look light, though the AIFS has been very consistent with laying down about 0.2" of QPF across central/northern portions of the MPX area Thursday morning, so hopefully in the next day or two we can get a few more models on board with this idea to start feeding some higher PoPs into the NBM, which are only 20s/30s at the moment.

Behind this front, will come a 1040mb high out of Canada for Friday. This will give us a brief cool day to end the week, with highs only expected to reach the upper 30s to lower 40s. However after Friday, we'll see upper ridging build back in slowly from the weekend into early next week. This will quickly send highs back up into the 50s/60s, but also push the jet back north, so we look to be dry through Monday of next week as well. This forecast ends Tuesday of next week with the beginnings of a more active period of weather to kick off April. We're still a ways out, but the ensembles remain in agreement on the large scale pattern taking on a western trough/eastern ridge to start April, which should finally result in some more interesting material to cover in these AFDs!

AVIATION /12Z TAFS THROUGH 12Z WEDNESDAY/

Issued at 559 AM CDT Tue Mar 24 2026

Not much change since the previous TAF issuance. BKN VFR mid to upper-level cigs will stick around through most of the period. Light winds will start out mainly from the south-southwest before shifting southeasterly by this afternoon. Will need to watch for the potential for a few potential hours of LLWS early tomorrow morning at RWF and MKT but confidence was too low to include this issuance.

KMSP...No additional concerns.

/OUTLOOK FOR KMSP/ WED PM...VFR. Wind lgt and vrb. THU...VFR. Chc -RA/MVFR. Wind N 10-20G30 kts. FRI...VFR. Wind NW 10-15G20 kts.

MPX WATCHES/WARNINGS/ADVISORIES

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