textproduct: Twin Cities

KEY MESSAGES

- A quiet morning today if a bit muggy, with no other weather impacts for parades or fun runs.

- Isolated storms return this afternoon and last through the evening, roughly 2-10pm. A couple storms may approach severe levels, but generally they will remain primarily a lightning and heavy rain threat. The majority will stay dry, with storms being isolated.

- Quiet weather for a few days after today, with our next chances for storms arriving late Tuesday into Wednesday.

DISCUSSION

Issued at 258 AM CDT Sat Jul 4 2026

The last of the showers have continued to diminish this morning, with our coverage area expected to be free of all precipitation before 4am. Satellite imagery further highlights the lack of activity with our colder cloud tops in southern Minnesota in the form of anvil runoff from the actual morning activity in central Iowa. Further storms are not expected until this afternoon, making for a clear window for holiday parades or runs to go off without a hitch. It will feel a bit muggy with dew points in the mid to upper 60s as temperatures climb into the low to mid 80s today under partly cloudy skies. Forecast soundings from the HRRR show a healthy plume of instability growing across the area into the afternoon upwards of 2000-2500 J/KG of SBCAPE with limited capping, with our main limiting factor being a lack of forcing for ascent amidst backing flow on the western side of a weak surface low centered over Wisconsin by midday. As such, shear is exceptionally weak today on the order of less than 20kts of 0-6km and an anticyclonic hodograph, resulting in suppressed omega driven mainly by daytime heating. The thermal profile would suggest a decent day for storms, however the lack of shear and forcing will most likely result in isolated to scattered pulse-type convection that will be fairly short lived and unable to sustain a healthy updraft for long. The relatively high dew points and PWATS around 1.5 inches are healthy enough to support some heavy rain in the storms that do manage to form, with rain rates in excess of 2''/hr possible with the strongest updrafts today. All this being said, coverage will be spotty at best, with most of the area ending up dry and an unlucky handful seeing the storm activity disrupting their holiday plans. A key thing to watch will be the initial few updrafts that try to get going amidst the daytime heating, as any remnant outflow boundaries could act as a focal point for further development by briefly enhancing the low level shear. This will unfortunately remain one of those days where the coverage and type of storms leads to low confidence in placement and timing, with the best we can do for now being a window that favors the peak heating hours of mid afternoon to early evening, diminishing after peak heating ends and our thermal profile begins to lose the low level adiabatic lapse rates.

By Sunday morning, upper level flow will have tilted northerly on the western side of the previously mentioned surface low allowing a weak area of surface high pressure to settle over Lake Superior. This will generally suppress any pop up storm chances despite similar temperatures and dew points to today, with weak subsidence hindering updraft development. This weak surface high persists in the region into Monday before moving out, with our upper level flow once again becoming zonal by early Tuesday as our next system begins to slide across the area in the form of another weak pseudo- stationary frontal boundary into Wednesday morning. A weak surface low may development off the eastern side of the Rockies, however the blended and ensemble guidance remains fairly muted so far as long lived rain chances. There is pretty good consensus with around 75% of membership within the GEFS showing a good chance for showers and storms Wednesday into Thursday as this surface low moves through, but only spotty chances afterwards. Our upper level flow remains fairly zonal, setting up yet another intermittent storm pattern marked by potential shortwaves, with time of day of the shortwaves moving through likely being a key factor in overall strength. As such, the NBM forecast for much of the second half of next week showcases slight to chance PoPs which makes sense given the airmass nature of potential showers and storms.

AVIATION /12Z TAFS THROUGH 18Z SUNDAY/

Issued at 643 AM CDT Sat Jul 4 2026

Where adequate clearing occurred, we managed to form some fog this morning, but that fog has evaded MPX terminals. There is a bank of low stratus along the MN/WI border where heavy rain fell last night, but it's not expected to move much from its current position. We're still anticipating scattered storms today, but it's a prob30 kind of setup. Current trends would say storms fire to the north of AXN in the 2pm-3pm timeframe, then start riding outflow boundaries south. This does delay some when the storm threat moves into the MPX area, so did delay prob30s by an hour from the 6z TAF.

KMSP...We will have to keep a close eye on the stratus over St. Paul as it could briefly impact the field this morning before burning off. Storm chances keep trending later, with greatest threat at the moment looking to be 9pm to 11pm, or just in time for your fireworks...

/OUTLOOK FOR KMSP/ SUN...VFR. Winds N 5-10 kts. MON...VFR. Winds SE 5-10 kts. TUE...VFR. Chc TS overnight. Winds SW 5-15 kts.

MPX WATCHES/WARNINGS/ADVISORIES

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