textproduct: Twin Cities

KEY MESSAGES

- Winter storm will slowly wind down through the evening. Worst conditions expected between now and 10pm.

- A couple inches of snow possible from a quick system Tuesday night.

- Temperatures return above freezing by Wednesday, with snow melt intensifying into the weekend.

DISCUSSION

Issued at 356 PM CDT Sun Mar 15 2026

Surface low this afternoon is over west-central Illinois, on its way to southern Lake Michigan. 24 hours ago, this was expected to moving up into Milwaukee, not Gary and the southern track of the surface low pulled the snow south as well. Our snow amount forecast from Saturday afternoon was pretty much spot-on, with a nice band of 24+ inches of snow falling to the north of the low track, but with the low going farther south, this band of heavy snow ended up falling 50- 60 miles south of where we had it. Snowfall gradients in this band are pretty crazy, with reports from the city of Eau Claire coming in around 10 inches, while southern Eau Claire county down in the Osseo and Fairchild areas saw upwards of 2 feet of snow.

With all that said, we still have an intense deformation band of snow that stretch from the eastern Twin Cities metro, all the way down to the southeast corner of Nebraska. We've seen visibilities in this band down under 1/4 mile down in south central MN, so it is pumping out 2" per hour snowfall rates. This heavy snowfall is also falling where our strong winds are expected to be for the rest of the day, with gusts to 50 mph expected down around the Fairmont area. This band will continue off to the east through the evening, with snow lingering in our far eastern CWA until about 6am Monday morning.

Headline changes...

For the Blizzard warning, we trimmed it to south of the MN River in southwest MN where winds are strongest and webcams show we are getting visibilities down around that 1/2 mile threshold in open areas. The blizzard warning then continues across south central MN and into the Eau Claire area. For south central MN, they are seeing the heaviest snow this afternoon and will see the strongest winds, with solid blizzard conditions expected down there, especially in open areas. For Red Wing and the southeast Twin Cities metro over to Eau Claire in WI, much of these counties have already seen over a foot of snow, so left the blizzard warning in place given the higher impacts they have already seen there. The one change made to this portion of the blizzard warning is we pulled the end time of the warning back from 7am Monday to 4am Monday given faster decrease in wind speeds forecast tonight (another result of the more southern storm track). For the rest of the area, we left a strong of Winter Storm Warning in the metro to along the US-8 corridor in WI where snow will fall through the rest of the day, but snowfall totals have not been as large as what was seen farther south. After that, the rest of MN was pulled down into a Winter Weather Advisory where we are getting blowing and drifting snow, but it is falling well short of blizzard bad.

There is one headline we get close to needing and that's a cold weather advisory tonight for west central into south central MN. We have minimum wind chills dropping down to that -25F threshold late tonight, but with us only seeing that for a short period of time and only bouncing around that mark, we decided against issuing a marginal cold weather advisory in mid-March.

For the rest of the forecast, not much has changed. An impressive upper ridge will develop this week over the southwest US. 500 heights with this ridge will basically smash any sort of climatology record we have, with heights expected to exceed 590dm, this is essentially a July level ridge showing up in March. Given these truly massive heights over the southwest, we'll see the storm track get shunted north into Canada. We'll remain northeast of the ridge, which means northwest flow though. As the storm track is lifting north, we will see a quick moving wave drop through in the northwest flow Tuesday evening. This will be a quick hitter, with 1-2 inches of snow expected. The warm nose will also be impinging on the west side of this precip band, so we could see a narrow band of mixed precip develop on the western edge of the precip shield as it moves through. Other than that, it's a question of how much we can warm with the melting snow pack in place. The warmest day looks to be Friday as a thermal ridge moves in ahead of what will be a dry cold front for Friday night or Saturday. The ECMWF shows 925mb of 15-18C coming into southwest MN Friday, which would support highs in the 70s if the snowpack doesn't get in the way. For next weekend, the spread in the forecast is huge as you'll find some models that have us post frontal, with highs in the 40s, while others are still warm sectoring us with highs in the 60s and 70s into the weekend. At least it looks dry, but it's going to take some time for the temperature forecast next weekend to settle down.

AVIATION /00Z TAFS THROUGH 00Z MONDAY/

Issued at 610 PM CDT Sun Mar 15 2026

Conditions continue to improve this evening, with most of central Minnesota seeing only minor impacts from blowing snow, & impacts farther south mostly still in the 1-3SM range. IFR visibilities continues into this evening at MKT for blowing snow, & across western Wisconsin where light snowfall doesn't end until after midnight. Ceilings are beginning to loft to VFR across much of central Minnesota, & expect this trend to continue at other MN terminals through the evening. Ceilings remain MVFR at WI terminals through the night, & MVFR stratus does appear likely to build back in across Minnesota by late tomorrow morning.

Wind gusts have mostly reached their peak speeds, & will begin to slowly diminish through the night. Northwest gusts of 25-30 kts remain through tomorrow afternoon.

KMSP...Conditions have greatly improved with the ending snow, & expect mostly MVFR vis for the next few hours before becoming VFR late tonight. Ceilings could bounce between MVFR & VFR through the night, but do look to become predominately MVFR overnight into early tomorrow morning.

/OUTLOOK FOR KMSP/ TUE...VFR bcmg MVFR/-SN. Wind S to SE 5-10kts. WED...VFR. Wind SW 5kts. THU...VFR. Wind SW 5kts.

MPX WATCHES/WARNINGS/ADVISORIES

MN...Winter Weather Advisory until 1 AM CDT Monday for Benton- Chippewa-Douglas-Isanti-Kanabec-Kandiyohi-McLeod-Meeker- Mille Lacs-Morrison-Pope-Renville-Sherburne-Stearns- Stevens-Swift-Todd-Wright. Winter Storm Warning until 1 AM CDT Monday for Anoka-Carver- Chisago-Hennepin-Ramsey-Sibley-Washington. Blizzard Warning until 4 AM CDT Monday for Blue Earth-Brown- Dakota-Goodhue-Lac Qui Parle-Le Sueur-Nicollet-Redwood- Rice-Scott-Steele-Waseca-Watonwan-Yellow Medicine. Blizzard Warning until 7 AM CDT Monday for Faribault-Freeborn- Martin. WI...Winter Storm Warning until 1 AM CDT Monday for Barron-Polk. Blizzard Warning until 4 AM CDT Monday for Chippewa-Dunn-Eau Claire-Pepin-Pierce-St. Croix. Winter Storm Warning until 4 AM CDT Monday for Rusk.