textproduct: Twin Cities

KEY MESSAGES

- Near record highs today.

- Cold front comes through tonight, with cooler temperatures the rest of the period.

- No major weather systems expected over the next 7 days.

DISCUSSION

Issued at 239 AM CDT Sat Mar 21 2026

h5 analysis this morning shows a ridge axis extending from the record shattering high centered over the southwest up into Montana. This ridge axis will shift east through the day as a cold front drops south out of Canada. The timing of these features will put a thermal ridge axis centered over the MPX area during the peak of the diurnal heating cycle. This is the same airmass that has been absolutely crushing record highs to our west and southwest the last few days, so we continued the trend of the previous shift of pushing highs 2-5 degrees above the NBM, which puts our forecast comfortably into the 70s (with some 80s in southwest and south central MN). We'll also be knocking on the door of record highs, see the Climate section for those numbers.

Tonight, we will be firmly in cold advection, which by the end of the night should result in fairly widespread stratocu field covering the MPX area. Behind the front will also come the threat for some light rain. However, forecast soundings are so hot and dry from the pre-frontal airmass, that we may never fully moisten enough to allow precip to reach the ground. The ECMWF suite of models continues to be the most aggressive with spreading out some light QPF across the MPX area. HREF members are pretty sparse with their precip, so we capped our pops in the 20-30% range, with much more than some brief periods of light rain looking tough to come by tonight. The bigger impact of the front will be the cold air dropping in behind it. Our highs for Sunday will be our 1am (midnight CST) temperature as we're unlikely to warm back above those observations Sunday afternoon, with afternoon highs likely struggling to just hit 40 on Sunday, with temperatures Sunday afternoon expected to run 30 to 35 degrees colder than Saturday afternoon's temperatures.

For the rest of the forecast, we'll remain on the northern periphery of the southern ridge. However, the ridge axis will have flattened some. This will bring the upper jet overhead which will keep our temperatures a bit more tempered compared to what we will see today, with highs in the 40s and 50s next week. Though the upper jet will be overhead, the active part of the storm track in terms of precip reaching the ground will be off to our north. We'll see another dry cold front Monday night into Tuesday, with our best chance for some light rain over the next 7 days coming Wednesday night into Thursday as another surface trough works through, this time a little farther south than Monday night.

After that, it's the end of March into the beginning of April before we start to potentially get into a more active pattern with the EPS showing the ridge axis moving to the east of the Mississippi River, with lower heights developing over the Rockies. Though we may reach into the 70s today, we're not going to be able to say winter and snowfall are behind us until we see how this potentially more active pattern into the first week of April pans out.

AVIATION /12Z TAFS THROUGH 12Z SUNDAY/

Issued at 549 AM CDT Sat Mar 21 2026

Few changes needed to the going TAFs, with timing of the wind shift and fropa today remaining unchanged from the 6z TAFs. Tonight, we will see precipitation getting generated from mid/upper level clouds, but it is questionable if any of that will reach the ground. 6z HRRR did show a bit of an uptick in reflectivity forecast 6z-10z from MSP over to EAU, so did a prob30 for a little -RA at MSP/RNH/EAU. RAP soundings continue to support MVFR cigs overspreading the area after 6z as continued cold advection cools the top of the boundary layer enough to support cloud formation.

KMSP...RAP forecast soundings continue to support MVFR cigs arriving around 9z Sunday and continuing through the morning. HRRR shows some precip fighting its way to the ground between 7z and 9z, so added a prob30 group for that potential.

/OUTLOOK FOR KMSP/ SUN...MVFR cigs in mrng. Wind N 10-15 kts. MON...VFR. Wind S 5-10 kts. TUE...VFR. Wind SE 5-15 kts.

CLIMATE

Issued at 239 AM CDT Sat Mar 21 2026

With the warmest temperatures so far this year forecast today here are the comparisons between record highs and our forecast highs for our primary climate sites.

Site | Forecast High | Record High ----------------------------------- MSP | 76 | 76 (1938) STC | 72 | 75 (1911) EAU | 74 | 77 (1911)

MPX WATCHES/WARNINGS/ADVISORIES

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