Marine Weather and Tide Forecast for Lake City, MN

DISCUSSION
Issued at 129 PM CDT Sat Apr 18 2026

Despite the sun, it's a raw mid-April day, with northwest winds gusting up around 30 mph and temperatures struggling just to top 40 degrees as we find ourselves between high pressure coming out of CO/WY and a deep low up by Hudson Bay. Of interest this afternoon though is the strong shortwave up over northern Saskatchewan. Most of the CAMs shows this wave diving into NoDak this evening, then sliding southeast across southern MN overnight. There will be just enough forcing with this wave to kick of some light precipitation. Given the cool temperatures, this precipitation will predominately fall as snow. Snow potential looks best southwest of roughly a Long Prairie to Stillwater line. We did introduce a patch of 30/40 PoPs following roughly ConShort PoP grids for what will hopefully be our last flakes of the 25-26 snow season. Though read on to see why that may not be...

For the first half of next week, we'll see upper riding slowly move across the central CONUS, this will start pushing warmer air back up into the upper Midwest. The warmest day looks to be Wednesday, when the NBM has highs in the lower 70s (western WI)
to mid 80s (western MN), though these highs are currently a little under the NBM 50th percentile, so we could be warmer, with highs in the 90s within the realm of possibilities down wind of the Buffalo Ridge in west central MN. We could be just as warm Thursday, but this is when the cold front arrives and with it will be cloud cover, rain chances, and slightly cooler temperatures. For that rain through, a surface low on Thursday will be going across the northwest corner of MN. The NBM shows dewpoints in the lower 60s moving into the area, so this doesn't just look to bring a chance of rain, but our next opportunity to possibly see strong to severe storms.

Behind the front, we will be replacing our central CONUS ridging to start the week with deep troughing over central NOAM. This will result in cooler temperatures for next weekend into the final week of April that will likely linger into early May as well. With the upper trough overhead, we'll have the potential for shortwaves to sneak through (like tonight) and given the cool temepratures aloft in the through, you can't completely rule out still seeing a few more snowflakes fall after tonight.
Beside the snow, there will also be potential for more freezes.
Next weekend marks when we start getting into the the median date range for when locations along and southeast of a line from New Ulm to the Twin Cities and Eau Claire see their final freeze of the spring. However, with the warmth we've had this spring, we're well underway in the green-up process and given more warmth we're expecting this week, we'll likely need to turn our frost/freeze program back on in southern MN, so we'll have to watch just how cold we get next weekend into the following week across southern MN.

AVIATION /18Z TAFS THROUGH 18Z SUNDAY/
Issued at 1218 PM CDT Sat Apr 18 2026

Gusty northwest winds will continue through the rest of the afternoon before settling down some overnight. Tonight, a small, but strong shortwave currently in northern Saskatchewan will swing through southern MN. The HRRR and the rest of the CAMS show forcing with this wave being strong enough to scare out a brief period of snow late tonight into Sunday morning, so added PROB30s to our MN terminals to account for that potential.
Behind this wave, it will be back to clear skies and steady northwest winds.

KMSP.. MVFR, possibly briefly IFR vis snow looks possible as early as 7 or 8z, though it's closer 12z, when the shortwave moves through that the -SN chances look best.

/OUTLOOK FOR KMSP/ MON...VFR. Wind S2 10-15G25 kts.
TUE...VFR. Wind SW 5-10 kts bcmng N.
WED...VFR. Wind SE 10-15G25 kts.

MPX WATCHES/WARNINGS/ADVISORIES
MN...None.
WI...None.