textproduct: Twin Cities

KEY MESSAGES

- Quiet weather today and much of tomorrow, before a cold front triggers a chance for strong to severe thunderstorms Friday evening.

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

DISCUSSION

Issued at 132 AM CDT Thu Sep 10 2026

TODAY...It'll be a nice one! Mostly sunny skies combine with light winds under surface high pressure today. Winds start to turn out of the south, however, bringing temperatures and dewpoints up slightly from yesterday.

FRIDAY...The setup remains largely the same for Friday evening as a bonafide cold front moves southeast from northern MN, likely triggering scattered storms along its path. If there's any change to the forecast, it is increasing confidence for northern and central MN, and decreasing confidence for southern MN. As the SPC highlights in this morning's SWODY2 discussion, weaker large scale ascent may become problematic for overcoming warmer 850-700 mb temperatures to the south. We are seeing this manifest with some of the hi-res CAMs that are starting to get into range, with storms only getting as far south as a line from Morris to St Cloud. For those areas to the north, veering low level winds and increasing surface moisture will aid in the development of initial supercells. This is where there is a greater risk for large hail, damaging winds, and even a low tornado potential. A strengthening LLJ would favor storms becoming more clustered through the evening, which would mitigate the severe risk the further south and east the front gets. Timing remains pretty consistent, with the initial storms developing in the late afternoon or early evening, and dissipating by midnight or so.

SATURDAY AND BEYOND...Temperatures behind the front will be much more seasonable with highs in the low to mid 70s and dewpoints in the 50s. The Upper MS Valley will become sandwiched between the exiting cold front and a developing low pressure system over the PNW Saturday into Sunday. As the approaching low deepens off the lee of the Rockies, a pool of surface moisture is expected to advect north across the region, rising PWAT anomalies to 150-200% of normal for mid September. In fact, any values approaching 1.8" is near the 99th percentile of sounding climatology for MPX this time of year. All of this moisture is pointless though, unless there is enough forcing to do something with it. There continues to be discrepancies between the evolution of the upper low, with it potentially lagging out west longer. At the same time though, the LLJ increasing in strength Sunday night would trigger and fuel widespread showers and storms. As the upper low moves east, rain likely continues into the first part of Monday.

The jet stream becomes more zonal, and eventually shifts out of the northwest, for the rest of the week. This will bring in a cooler, drier air mass at least for few days, but potentially even longer. One interesting thing to note is that we could see our first high in the 60s since June 17th at MSP. (I know, kind of odd for it to be June... it was a day that was very cloudy and rainy.) We do have PoPs return Wednesday evening, indicating the chance for some shortwaves to move southeast along the flow.

AVIATION /12Z TAFS THROUGH 18Z FRIDAY/

Issued at 623 AM CDT Thu Sep 10 2026

Solid VFR conditions expected throughout this duration for all sites. Only wrinkle will be some ground fog around RNH at the start of this TAF set. Mainly clear skies, aside from some fair wx diurnal cumulus clouds during the afternoon hours. Light/variable winds overnight will become SSW at around 10kts, potentially higher speeds in far western MN with gusts around 20kts.

KMSP...Minor crosswind concerns with wind directions turning to 210 for much of the daytime hours but speeds are not expected to run higher than 12G17kts. Once beyond sunrise on Friday, breezy/gusty conditions will develop and will persist through much of the day.

/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.