textproduct: Twin Cities

KEY MESSAGES

- Cold and breezy but otherwise quiet today. Happy Thanksgiving!

- Another large scale system will arrive Friday night into Saturday, with a Winter Storm Watch issued for southern Minnesota where several inches of snow accumulations are possible.

- Temperatures turn even colder behind the early weekend system, with highs in the teens and lows in the single digits Sunday and Monday. Wind chills will drop below zero for both mornings.

DISCUSSION

Issued at 254 AM CST Thu Nov 27 2025

A brief pocket of clearing that moved from central to southern Minnesota over the last few hours is once again filling in with stratus that doesn't really look to move all that much today, resulting in mostly cloudy skies for the holiday. Northwesterly flow aloft coupled with cold air advection in the low to mid levels will keep the clouds locked in as surface high pressure will not be strong enough to overcome the dynamic cooling keeping the clouds around. Winds will remain breezy at 10-15mph with some gusts up to around 20mph out of the northwest across the area as temperatures peak in the mid to upper 20s. A few flakes may squeeze out of the low cloud deck, however no new snow accumulations are expected today giving us a break until our next system looks to arrive Friday evening into Saturday.

Speaking of which, the first half of Friday will be relatively quiet as our next system is developing over the Rocky Mountains, with continued cooler temperatures as weak surface high pressure keeps the colder air locked in and flow aloft remains northwesterly to westerly. Once we reach sunset and into Friday evening, the first echoes of what looks to be a fairly long duration snow event move into southwestern Minnesota as a developing surface low over the 4 corners region begins to strengthen as an upper level trough negatively tilts coming off the mountains. There is a slight delay in the movement of the surface low due to the tilting of the trough, resulting in the low pressure system lingering over the four corners region into early Saturday before finally beginning to move towards southeastern Iowa with a trajectory towards southern Lake Michigan by Sunday morning. There is fantastic agreement for this time scale on a broad shield of light to moderate snowfall on the northern side of the surface low which looks to continuously produce snow showers across the southern half of Minnesota and into western Wisconsin through all of Saturday before the low pressure system pushes towards the Great Lakes by sunrise on Sunday. There is still some wobble within the track of the surface low, however there would be need to be a significant shift to the south to avoid seeing accumulating snow as it moves through, especially for southern Minnesota which will see the best overall chance for significant snow accumulation. Forecast soundings show a deep DGZ upwards of 10kft in depth with forcing plentiful due to the incoming trough, falling heights, and proximity to the surface low. Snow ratios will likely hover in the low teens given the deep DGZ and winds will be much weaker than the system which moved through yesterday night such that snow accumulations should be a bit easier to realize without the blowing and drifting. We have issued a Winter Storm Watch south of the Minnesota river tonight due to the high likelihood for accumulating snow, with 6 inches or more possible in portions of southern Minnesota from midnight Saturday to sunrise Sunday. Given it is a longer duration even on the order of 24-36 hours, snowfall rates may not be particularly high at any given time and instead we rely on the duration of snowfall and the good dynamics within the DGZ to produce most of the accumulation.

As the system moves out by midday Sunday, surface high pressure returns alongside northwesterly upper level flow, bringing in further 10 to 15 below Celsius 850mb temperature anomalies which will keep cold air locked in place to start December. Forecast temperatures Sunday morning will be in the single digits with wind chills in the single digits below zero thanks to relatively weak winds. Low temperatures Monday morning not even reach the 0 mark for all but the Twin Cities where the urban 'heat' island may keep us just above 0 as wind chills once again drop towards -10 with winds remaining fairly weak. Temperatures rebound a bit by the middle of next week with highs in the mid 20s and lows in the low teens once again. After the weekend snow, further chances look sparse with a couple chances for flurries that look unlikely to accumulate towards the end of next week.

AVIATION /06Z TAFS THROUGH 06Z FRIDAY/

Issued at 1101 PM CST Wed Nov 26 2025

Guidance is handling the two separate banks of stratus rather poorly this evening, thus the TAF was handled using the previous in addition to the observations and timing based on the movement of the clouds. Generally, we expect to hover in high MVFR/low VFR for most of the period, becoming VFR towards the very end with cloud decks from 020-035 for most of the period. Winds will remain at 300-320 sustained at around 10kts with occasional gusts to 20kts, once again diminishing towards the end of the period. We may need to AMD in some changes to the CIGS once the northern stratus deck that is moving southwards from central Minnesota arrives, however for now expect borderline MVFR/VFR.

KMSP...Timed out the arrival of the additional MVFR stratus based on the speed of development around 05z.

/OUTLOOK FOR KMSP/ FRI...VFR, bcmg MVFR/IFR/-SN late. Wind NW to SE 5kts. SAT...MVFR/IFR/-SN. Wind NE 5-10kts. SUN...VFR. Wind NW 10kts.

MPX WATCHES/WARNINGS/ADVISORIES

MN...Winter Storm Watch from Friday evening through Saturday evening for Blue Earth-Brown-Faribault-Freeborn-Martin- Nicollet-Redwood-Steele-Waseca-Watonwan. WI...None.