textproduct: Twin Cities

KEY MESSAGES

- Critical fire weather conditions possible Monday and Wednesday in western MN

- Shower and thunderstorm chances return Thursday, mainly for eastern MN and western WI.

- Temperatures cooling back down for next weekend.

DISCUSSION

Issued at 214 PM CDT Sun Apr 19 2026

We started today with a couple of snowfall streaks on satellite across western MN and central MN into western WI that didn't even make it to lunch before melting off. With high pressure coming in from Canada, it's another day with highs 10 to 15 degrees below normal. Tonight, clear skies and light winds from the high moving overhead will lead to a chilly morning to start the work week, with lows in the 20s Monday morning. The good news is after that chilly start, we will be on the back side of the high with southerly winds that will quickly warm us up. We'll see highs around 70 Monday afternoon in western MN and those gusty winds and dry conditions will result in elevated to critical fire weather conditions in western MN. We did lower dewpoints/RHs Monday from what the NBM has, but did not go all out mixing mode like the HRRR has with RHs dipping into the teens. Still, we have a pretty broad area with RH values between 20 and 25 percent and sustained winds up near 20 mph with gusts to around 30. For that reason, we have issued a pretty broad Fire Weather Watch. Critical fire weather conditions are most likely along and west of a line from Redwood Falls, to Willmar and Glenwood. However, we gave this watch a pretty good buffer to the east/northeast into central MN given the potential to have mixing be more aggressive than currently forecast.

Tuesday will bring us a break from fire weather concerns as a weak boundary stalls out over southern MN. This front will be dry, but it will cut back on our winds considerably making Tuesday easily the nicest day of the next week, with light winds, sunny skies and highs around 70. Tuesday night, this front will surge back north as a warm front, bringing a renewed round of breezy southerly winds for Wednesday. This will also bring us our warmest day of the week. The current NBM forecast highs for Wednesday are sitting just below the 50th percentile, so there's definitely room for us to go a bit higher for max temperatures on Wednesday, with chances of seeing a 90 out in west central MN continuing to increase. These hot temperatures and breezy winds will bring a renewed risk of seeing critical fire weather conditions to western MN on Wednesday. Right now though, the limiting factor for seeing critical fire weather conditions on Wednesday are the dewpoints. Those southerly winds will be advecting in higher moisture as well and the current forecast keeps our RHs Wednesday largely above 25% (barely). However, it won't take much of an uptick in temperatures or drop in the forecast dewpoints on Wednesday to send RHs back below the 25% Red Flag Warning threshold, so we'll have to watch fire weather trends for Wednesday closely as well.

Thursday, a surface low is forecast to track across NoDak into northwest MN and up to the Lake of the Woods region, with its cold front getting driven across MN during the day on Thursday. This track of the low puts us in the prime region to get hit with this systems dry slot. As a result, we continue to see rainfall with this system trend farther east. Western WI looks to see the brunt of the precip, with it looking increasingly likely that the one place that could really use a good soaking rain in our area, western MN, will come away with another zero with this system. Where storms go, NBM continues to advertise dewpoints getting up to around 60, so as we continue to see with the CSU Machine Learning probabilities, a severe risk will exist for where prefrontal convection occurs.

Behind this system, a large upper trough will take up shop over the center of North America. Right now, the EPS continues to favor us remaining south of the lowest H5 heights in a region that is dominated by high pressure at the surface. This just means that we continue to trend in the dry direction for Friday through next weekend. Highs will be falling back into the 50s and lows in the 20s and 30s.

AVIATION /18Z TAFS THROUGH 18Z MONDAY/

Issued at 1147 AM CDT Sun Apr 19 2026

VFR conditions to prevail. Any snow that accumulated this morning has quickly melted and skies have cleared. NW winds will remain breezy through dusk then go light and variable, if not calm, tonight into Monday morning. Scattered to broken high level clouds return Monday afternoon along with gusty southerly winds.

KMSP...No additional concerns.

/OUTLOOK FOR KMSP/ TUE...VFR. Wind N 5-10 kts. WED...VFR. Wind SE 10-15G25 kts. THU...MVFR/-RA likely, mainly PM. Wind S 10-15G25 kts.

MPX WATCHES/WARNINGS/ADVISORIES

MN...Fire Weather Watch from Monday morning through Monday evening for Benton-Brown-Chippewa-Douglas-Kanabec-Kandiyohi-Lac Qui Parle-Martin-McLeod-Meeker-Mille Lacs-Morrison- Nicollet-Pope-Redwood-Renville-Sherburne-Sibley-Stearns- Stevens-Swift-Todd-Watonwan-Wright-Yellow Medicine. WI...None.