textproduct: Twin Cities

KEY MESSAGES

- Snow band, with 2-4 inches (isolated amounts to 5 inches) of snow expected today along the Minnesota River valley into southeast MN. Winter Weather Advisory continues for this region today.

- Cool weekend followed by a gradual warmup and a couple chances for rain/snow next week.

DISCUSSION

Issued at 218 AM CST Sat Feb 28 2026

Now that we can see the whites of today's snow storms eyes, we're getting strong confidence in where this forecast is heading. At 2am, there was a rapidly strengthening band of snow on MRMS reflectivity over central portions of eastern SoDak, extending into the Marshall area of southwest MN. This lines up will with a strong area of fgen in the h7-h6 layer that extends east into southern MN. This lines up well with what has been the southern camp of models the past couple of days, so we have aggressively pushed this forecast toward the southern solutions like the ECMWF (and AIFS), GFS, and Canadian. We have really avoided the HRRR which continues to run a northern bias, which is especially evident now that we can see this band of snow taking shape over SoDak. With this forecast, we have really focused the highest QPF/snow to along the MN River into southeast MN. The biggest change from the NBM is this really sharpens up the northern precipitation gradient, as when you remove northern solutions like the HRRR from the blend, you are not spreading as much snow up to the I-94 corridor as the NBM has. This forecast update has a band of 2-4 inches of snow right along the MN River into Rochester, with some amounts around 5 inches out toward Madison and Granite Falls. We have seen a bit a decrease in QPF with this system as the antecedent dry airmass eats up some of our initial snow. With this forecast, we have 1-2" of snow getting about as far north as the southwest Twin Cities metro (outside 494), with up to an inch getting into Menomonie and Eau Claire. We left the Advisory in place, though did trim back totals in Carver over to Pierce county. The other change to this forecast was to considerably boost PoPs through Saturday afternoon, as this snow looks to linger through much of the afternoon. With snow lingering longer than initially forecast, we also extended the Advisory segments out 3 hours in time.

Behind the snow, the question for Saturday night is how much do skies clear out. Our current forecast is pretty conservative, with lows Sunday morning staying largely up in the single digits above zero, though models that clear us out also send temperatures crashing. The HRRR, RAP, and Canadian are good examples of this, with much of our area dropping below zero Sunday morning, with lows a good 5-10 degrees colder across the board than what we currently have for lows Sunday morning. For the rest of Sunday, it will be dry, with highs only getting into the lower 20s, with March getting going on a chilly note.

Of course the cold start won't last long as next week we see upper ridging build up through New England and into eastern Canada. This will turn our flow aloft out of the southwest next week, which means gradually warming temperatures through the week. As this warm air moves in Monday night, there is potential for a band of WAA precip to move through. There's quite a bit of spread as to whether this will happen, with the AIFS keeping our area completely dry and the EPS really backing off on precipitation now as well. Given the overnight timing for this potential precipitation event, the p-types we would see would end up being of the winter variety and it looks like it would be a wet snow at that. This would be something that would likely impact the morning commute Tuesday IF it were to happen, so we'll have to see how this precipitation trends. After this system, we have an amplified pattern with strong ridges in the eastern Pac and eastern North America, with a deep trough over the eastern Rockies into the Plains. This is a weather pattern that certainly has a lot of potential to spin up some strong storms depending on how all the finer details come together. This far out, those details aren't very clear, but with a general consensus of a trough coming through at the end of the week, the broad-brushed 20- 40 PoPs from Thursday into Saturday makes sense. This pattern will also offer us some potential for truly spring-like temperatures (highs in the 50s and 60s), though model spread with temperatures is huge right now for the second half of next week, so the more conservative warmth of the current NBM between the extremes (highs in the 30s to highs in the 50s/60s) is where we sit.

AVIATION /18Z TAFS THROUGH 18Z SUNDAY/

Issued at 1146 AM CST Sat Feb 28 2026

The snow has shown its hand and was able to remove snow at all TAF sites along and north of I-94. LIFR conditions continue at times at RWF and MKT with moderate to heavy snow. The heaviest rates will subside early this afternoon, then the snow will end by this evening. MVFR cigs may linger across southern MN this evening, then VFR expected area wide overnight and Sunday.

KMSP...Snow will remain south. Otherwise, no concerns.

/OUTLOOK FOR KMSP/ MON...VFR. Wind S 10-15 kts. TUE...MVFR. Chc MVFR/-SN early. Wind VRB 5 kts. WED...VFR. Wind SE 5-10 kts.

MPX WATCHES/WARNINGS/ADVISORIES

MN...Winter Weather Advisory until 5 PM CST this afternoon for Brown-Chippewa-Kandiyohi-Lac Qui Parle-McLeod-Nicollet- Redwood-Renville-Sibley-Stevens-Swift-Yellow Medicine. Winter Weather Advisory until 9 PM CST this evening for Blue Earth-Faribault-Freeborn-Goodhue-Le Sueur-Martin-Rice- Scott-Steele-Waseca-Watonwan. WI...None.