678
FXUS63 KMPX 302106
AFDMPX

Area Forecast Discussion
National Weather Service Twin Cities/Chanhassen MN
406 PM CDT Sun Jun 30 2024

.KEY MESSAGES...

- 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.

&&

.DISCUSSION...
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.

&&

.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