textproduct: Twin Cities

KEY MESSAGES

- Marginal risk of severe weather (1/5) tomorrow for a wind and hail risk.

- Temperatures still cooler than normal, but warming back up to normal (highs around 80) by next week.

DISCUSSION

Issued at 214 AM CDT Thu Jun 18 2026

Today and Tomorrow...With the jet stream digging down south of the Upper Midwest and northerly winds from the surface up past 850 mb we will be in a cold air advection regime today and tonight. This will keep temperatures below normal with highs in the upper 60s to lower 70s. We should see clearing skies this morning and plenty of sun today. This combination will lead to favorable mixing and a gusty afternoon. There could be enough saturation aloft for some elevated showers/storms in southwest Minnesota this afternoon/evening. Weak shear and instability keeps this general thunder at most. Looking ahead to tomorrow will be a more interesting setup as a shortwave moves in to provide some forcing. We will continue to have moisture as the main challenge on Friday when it comes to rain as there is no clear moisture source like we had on Wednesday. Shear will pick up as the shortwave approaches, but it will be mostly speed shear with little directional shear. Current CAM soundings show possible inverted V soundings with elevated instability. This gives storm risks of elevated hail storms and with the inverted V sounding some damaging winds could also be seen. With that moisture question though SPC has kept this as a marginal risk (a 1 out of 5).

This weekend... The weekend has trended towards a drier forecast over the past few model runs. Looking towards the global ensembles a day ago the ENS was holding on to rain chances, but the ENS is now moving towards the GEFS and GEPS dry solutions. This drier solution is not dry on a regional scale, just more so that what rain does happen stays to our south. Looking towards the deterministic global models the ECMWF, GFS, and GDPS track the low through IA/MO and keep rain mainly south of the border. Temperatures still favored to be below normal with us on the cooler side of the system, but warmer than what we have seen recently with highs in the 70s over the weekend.

Next week... Despite the decreasing rain chances this weekend the opposite is happening for Tue/Wed next week with increasing clustering within ensemble guidance as another wave moves in aloft. Still a fair amount of spread across these two days for timing, but there is good agreement among membership for the occurrence of this system in the Upper Midwest. So fairly good confidence in it happening, but low confidence on when during these two days. NBM temperatures show a generally increasing max temperature throughout the week with temperatures back to being generally around normal (normal max temperatures is around 80 for mid June).

AVIATION /06Z TAFS THROUGH 12Z FRIDAY/

Issued at 1215 AM CDT Thu Jun 18 2026

Rain has come to an end, but lingering moisture from the system that gave us the rain has left some low stratus over eastern Minnesota and western Wisconsin. This low stratus will dissipate later this morning. VFR is expected to persist for the rest of the period after that. Winds will be from the northwest overall through the period. Typical diurnal speeds light overnight and gusty up to around 20 knots in the afternoon.

KMSP...MVFR ceilings will linger for the the first few hours of the period. These ceilings will slowly lift by 5 am.

/OUTLOOK FOR KMSP/ FRI...VFR. Chc of MVFR/TSRA. Wind W at 5-10 kts. SAT...VFR. Wind N at 5-10 kts. SUN...VFR. Wind NE at 10-15 kts.

MPX WATCHES/WARNINGS/ADVISORIES

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