Area Forecast Discussion
Issued by NWS Twin Cities, MN

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678 FXUS63 KMPX 302106 AFDMPX Area Forecast Discussion National Weather Service Twin Cities/Chanhassen MN 406 PM CDT Sun Jun 30 2024 .KEY MESSAGES...
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- Best rain chances early in the week come Monday night. Best chance for seeing more than an inch of rain will be from south central MN toward western WI. - Thunderstorms and locally heavy rainfall likely for the 4th of July. - For the next week, highs will continue to run a little below normal.
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&& .DISCUSSION...
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Issued at 405 PM CDT Sun Jun 30 2024 The best way to describe the weather today is perfect. Light winds, sunny skies, temperatures around 70, and dewpoints in the 40s have given us a weather day that will be tough top the rest of the year. Of course all good things must come to an end and this weather will come to an end tonight as the high pressure overhead now moves off to the Great Lakes. Monday and Tuesday... The period that continues to look to have the most widespread coverage of precip is Monday night as yet another 50+ kt LLJ moves across MN. We`ll start to have WAA overspread the area Monday afternoon, but it will be encountering dry low level air. Because of this, there`s quite a bit of spread on how quickly rain moves in, with the NAMnest showing widespread showers across MN Monday afternoon, with models like the HRRR/ECMWF really holding off on brining precip into MN until the late afternoon or early evening. The track record this summer is that if you have the forcing with enough moisture, you get the rain, so kept an earlier precip mention going for Monday, following more along with the NAM idea. Widespread showers and storms are expected Monday night with the arrival of the LLJ. Guidance continues to show two swaths of heavier precip Monday night, one up near the international border with the better forcing and a second from eastern Neb toward central WI with the better instability. There`s still spread though on where these heavier regions of rain will exist. The HREF has the southern rain axis from roughly Omaha to La Crosse while the ECMWF/EPS have it more from Sioux City to Eau Claire (with the Euro suite also shifting the northern heavy rain to the Canadian side of the international border). The severe risk in the current day 2 period looks pretty minimal in the MPX area thanks to limited instability, with our greatest risk of strong to severe storms coming late Monday night in south central MN as the higher muCAPE values move north across Iowa with the LLJ. As the previous discussion mentioned, Tuesday looks to have the more favorable severe setup, but the trend from the 12z guidance was to shift where the front and LLJ will be by the afternoon, with the greatest risk for additional heavy rain and severe weather on Tuesday looking to be just southeast of the MPX area. For QPF, western through central MN looks to be in a bit of a lull in the precip, with amounts over the two days struggling to reach a half inch. Today`s forecast has 1-2" rainfall amounts along and southeast of a line from Fairmont to Ladysmith, though given the convective nature of the activity, the footprint for 1+" rainfall amounts is still likely to shift some. Wednesday will be dry, but there will be an h5 trough digging across the northern Rockies that will become our problem for Independence Day. This will be a slow moving h5 low that will be moving across southern MN on Thursday, potentially putting quite the damper on many 4th of July activities. Precipitation with this system looks to be driven my more cool season type mechanisms, with the warm conveyer belt ahead of the h5 low resulting in a broad area of isentropic lift and frontogenesis. Because of this forcing, our severe threat is looking low given the expectations of widespread rain and cloud cover limiting instability, but it looks like we could see another 0.75-1.5" of rain out of this, with current trends favoring central MN for these higher amounts. We would love to say a stretch of dry weather will follow into next weekend, but Friday will likely see scattered showers develop within the cyclonic flow to the west of the low. For the weekend, the EPS mean h5 heights show troughing remaining in place through the weekend over the upper MS Valley, so lower precipitation chances (30s and 40s) remain in place for the weekend as well, though the signal for severe weather and heavy rain over the weekend is low. Next week, trends show us leaning toward northwest flow as upper ridging builds into the northern Rockies. This would allow temperatures to at least more frequently hit our normal daily highs and hopefully give us a weather pattern that will allow us to slowly dry out.
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&& .AVIATION /18Z TAFS THROUGH 18Z MONDAY/... Issued at 1214 PM CDT Sun Jun 30 2024 A quiet TAF period with no notable aviation weather impacts today. Light and variable winds around 5 knots are expected this afternoon. VFR with mostly clear to clear skies today. Southeasterly winds increase Monday morning. Gusts up to 25kts will be possible by late morning. Precipitation chances increase throughout Monday. The best chance of any SHRA is just AFTER the end of the TAF period Monday evening. KMSP...No additional concerns. /OUTLOOK FOR KMSP/ TUE...MVFR. Chance IFR SHRA/TSRA. Wind SW 10-15 kts. WED...VFR.Wind WSW 15G25 kts. THU...VFR. Chance MVFR SHRA/TSRA.Wind S 5-10 kts. && .MPX WATCHES/WARNINGS/ADVISORIES... MN...None. WI...None. && $$ DISCUSSION...MPG AVIATION...BPH