textproduct: Twin Cities

KEY MESSAGES

- Thaws today and Tuesday, with highs in the well into the 30s and 40s both days. Likely the last thaw for January.

- Light mixed precipitation possible northeast of I-94 Monday night/Tuesday morning.

- Unsettled Thursday and Friday, with light snow, though it only looks to amount to up to 4 inches of accumulation.

DISCUSSION

Issued at 134 AM CST Mon Jan 12 2026

Temperatures have struggled to cool down overnight with mild westerly winds and upper level cloud cover keeping temperatures elevated. This will set the stage for a mild day today with a Pacific airmass in place. Based on how temperatures have performed in these airmasses this month, highs today will likely overachieve what the NBM has for highs, so we did boost today's highs up to the NBM 90th percentile values. This will give us highs in the 40s possibly pushing as far north as the Twin Cities, while snow free areas in southwest MN may flirt with 50.

Tonight into Tuesday morning, a strong shortwave will track from northeast NoDak into northern WI. We will be on the warm side of this system, with strong isentropic lift likely to result some light precip getting down to about a St. Cloud to Eau Claire line late tonight into Tuesday morning. This precip will be encountering a warm nose with temps well above freezing, which means whatever reaches the ground, it looks to do so as liquid. Forecast soundings show us being quite warm though, with another round of January rain looking to be the most likely p-type with this band of precipitation. Though the farther northeast you get in the MPX coverage area, the cooler it will be, which means some freezing rain will be possible Tuesday morning over northwest WI, so a future Winter Weather Advisory may be needed north of I-94 in western WI depending on just how much precip we can get this far southwest, along with what side of freezing our surface temperatures will be. We'll then get one more mild day behind this morning precip on Tuesday, though we have seen 925-850mb temperatures trend down a little for Tuesday, which just means Tuesday looks to have highs similar to Monday as opposed to being a few degrees warmer.

Tuesday night will feature strong CAA, with winds looking to gust up to around 40mph. Although PoPs are pretty minimal, as we go through the night, we'll see temperatures in the stratus layer cool into the DGZ, which means we should start getting some flurries as well, though this moisture layer looks shallow, so it's unlikely we'll get enough snow to accumulate. For Wednesday, we get cold and dry high pressure. This means we'll get to see some sun, though highs Wednesday will be running a good 20 degrees cooler than what we'll see Tuesday.

For Thursday through Friday night, not much has changed in this period from the previous few forecasts. We'll see multiple waves ripple across the area in persistent northerly flow. We'll see a pretty strong N-S oriented thermal gradient setup across the area on Thursday, with highs again pushing 40 near the SD border. This means we'll likely see snow transition to rain Thursday afternoon in western MN before colder air arrives Thursday night to change us over to snow for good. Basically, it looks like once snow starts flying on Thursday, it doesn't stop until Saturday morning. By Saturday morning, much of our area should have seen 0.2" to 0.3" of QPF falling as snow, with an overachieving snowfall amount over the multi day period looking to be 4 inches. Most of this snow we get this period looks to come Thursday afternoon/evening as it initially moves in and thermal gradients will be strongest. So there's potential for needing Advisories on Thursday depending on how the heavier snow lines up with the Thursday evening commute.

Behind this snow, it will be much colder for the weekend, especially on Saturday, where highs will struggle to get out of the single digits. In addition to be colder, this may also be the start of another clipper wave train pattern like we saw at the beginning of December. Time will tell, but the second half of January is certainly looking to be much colder than the first half of the month and feature more snow as well, with the cold January rains looking to be done after Tuesday morning.

AVIATION /06Z TAFS THROUGH 06Z TUESDAY/

Issued at 1110 PM CST Sun Jan 11 2026

No major changes since the last routine amendment. VFR conditions continue with westerly winds becoming southwest late in the period and cigs lowering to around 10kft Monday evening.

KMSP....No additional concerns.

/OUTLOOK FOR KMSP/ TUE...VFR, chc MVFR/-SHRA early. Wind NW 10-15G25kts. WED...VFR, chc MVFR early. Wind N 10-15kts. THU...MVFR/-SN likely, chance IFR/LIFR. Wind S 5-10kts.

MPX WATCHES/WARNINGS/ADVISORIES

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