textproduct: Twin Cities

KEY MESSAGES

- Quiet weather continues through tomorrow evening, late tomorrow a cold front will trigger a chance for strong to severe thunderstorms in the evening/night.

- Extended forecast features additional rain chances Sunday and Monday, along with slightly below average temperatures this weekend into next week.

DISCUSSION

Issued at 245 PM CDT Thu Sep 10 2026

Our beautiful weather will continue the rest of today and most of tomorrow as high pressure dominates. Tomorrow afternoon a cold front will move into northwest Minnesota and from the evening to the morning will moves across Minnesota and western Wisconsin. This will be driving force behind the thunderstorms chances. So with ample forcing attention then turns to the mesoscale environment, to determine where CI will occur and where convection can be maintained. The parameter that looks good across the broader region is shear. Hodographs support supercells with forecast soundings showing almost textbook curved hodographs. The HRRR for example has very high amounts of SRH in 0-1km of 300 sometimes 400 m2/s2. The limiting factor will be instability especially in the lower levels. There is little low level instability for us, with the main area of low level instability staying across northern Minnesota. For this reason many of the CAMs that go this far out have not shown much convection for us and they keep the main area to our north across areas covered by WFO FGF and DLH. If we can get storms to initiate then the environment will be favorable for supercells with all modes of severe weather possible. The most likely area will be across central Minnesota where SPC has higher risks as well for all modes. Although with high LCLs, the main risk will be for hail and wind. Rain wise this appears to be a very convectively driven rain signal. So either a lot of rain with a thunderstorm or nothing. So most will see no rain.

This will be a notable cold front with a much colder air mass over us this weekend behind frontal passage. Highs on Saturday look to be in the lower 70s and Sunday in the 60s. Overall our first taste of more fall like weather after the continuation of summer temperatures for the start of September. Sunday into Monday though I have some good news as a large, more fall like system will move into the Upper Midwest. By more fall like I mean supportive of widespread stratiform rain rather than thunderstorms. As drought has continued to expand across Minnesota and western Wisconsin this could provide some much needed relief with a nice soaking rain. Precipitable water values still look to be 150-200% of normal and this moisture combined with the forcing of a pretty stacked shortwave aloft conceptually makes this look like the kind of system that gives us a good rain. Looking towards both deterministic and ensemble guidance there is strong agreement in the large scale, more synoptic, factors. Basically pretty much unanimous agreement of this occurring across membership, with 98 percent of global ensemble membership showing widespread rain chances. Where there are differences are where the heaviest QPF sets up. So while PoPs are and should remain high QPF values are more variable. As we get closer we should be able to hone in better on where the heavier QPF will fall. Going back to ensemble membership it is when you go up to rainfall of a quarter inch or more is where the spread starts to show. This rain will come with WAA on Monday bringing highs up slightly into the mid 60s to mid 70s. Behind the system on Tuesday though cooler air returns with highs falling back into the mid to upper 60s. Mid week looks to trend dry behind the early week rain with a very dispersive signal in the models late week. Each deterministic global model alone, ensembles aside, has a very different evolution of the pattern late next week. What is more certain is that the cooler temperatures look likely to continue.

AVIATION /00Z TAFS THROUGH 06Z SATURDAY/

Issued at 706 PM CDT Thu Sep 10 2026

VFR through the periods with gusty southerly winds the main impact tomorrow. Wind speeds will increase after midnight with gusts around 20 kts expected across western & central MN overnight. Gusts will quickly increase to 25-30 kts by 9-10 AM & stay around 30 kts through the afternoon. SCT/BKN mid-level clouds move in overnight & persist into the afternoon.

KMSP...Wind speeds increase to around 10 kts after midnight but not expecting much in the way of gusts until after sunrise. Gusts will average around 30 kts through late morning & the afternoon, but a few gusts up to 35 kts are possible at times.

/OUTLOOK FOR KMSP/ SAT...VFR. Winds NW 8-12kts. SUN...Chance -TSRA/MVFR. Wind NE 8-12kts. MON...RA/MVFR expected, chance TSRA/IFR. Wind SE 15G25kts becoming SW.

MPX WATCHES/WARNINGS/ADVISORIES

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