Marine Weather and Tide Forecast for Finlayson, MN

DISCUSSION
Issued at 234 PM CDT Fri Apr 18 2025

Areas of clouds and a little drizzle are moving through the area this afternoon, with some clearing moving into central Minnesota.
This cloud/drizzle activity is being driven by a jet streak aloft, but fighting a losing battle with dry air dropping down from the Canadian Plains. As an attending long wave trough sweeps over the area tonight into Saturday morning, that may be able to spur a couple more weak showers in far northern MN, but little accumulation is expected. A few snowflakes could mix in.

This weekend, should see a couple dry days with a brief period of upper level ridging. With steep low level lapse rates and a widespread dry airmass, this could lead to Saturday and Sunday afternoons seeing tanking relative humidities into the 20-30% range.
On Saturday, this would be accompanied by westerly winds of 5-10 mph with some gusts nearing 15 mph. On Sunday winds switch and become more southerly and slightly stronger, sustained 5-15mph with gusts of 15-25mph. This could lead to some near-critical fire weather conditions on either day. One caveat to the Sunday RH will be along Lake Superior, where thanks to slightly more easterly winds humidities could stay a little higher.

Late Sunday into Monday, a upper level trough and attending vort max are progged to sweep up from the southern and central plains, pulling some Gulf moisture along with it. Agreement for placement of this low continues to improve, putting the eastern half of our CWA under the potential to be impacted by the occluded quadrant of this storm, with the best chance for 0.5" of QPF or more across NW WI.
Due to some temperature differences of a couple degrees in either direction, there are still some fairly large discrepancies when it comes to possible snowfall and resulting accumulations. For now, we have a possible several tenths of an inch for portions of the MN Arrowhead and NW WI, but a high end of a couple inches is possible (10-40% chance). Accumulations are unlikely to stick around or have significant impacts with this current forecast, especially since highs on Monday should rise above freezing.

We'll have continued chances for precipitation on and off through next week, with temperatures around to above normal, raising into the 40s and 50s to near 60F for some areas.

AVIATION /06Z TAFS THROUGH 06Z SUNDAY/
Issued at 1222 AM CDT Sat Apr 19 2025

A line of showers is exiting NW WI this evening with MVFR stratus sinking south across northern MN. Upstream observations in Canada have some ceilings as low as IFR. This cloud deck is expected to continue south through the night with IFR conditions most likely at INL and MVFR further south. Skies will begin to clear up in the early afternoon with clear skies and variable winds by tomorrow evening.

MARINE /FOR NEAR SHORE WATERS OF WESTERN LAKE SUPERIOR/
Issued at 234 PM CDT Fri Apr 18 2025

Northerly winds of 5-15 knots continue through the day Saturday. A couple stronger gusts up to 20 knots could be possible here and there. Into Sunday, winds should turn and become south to southeasterly, again around 5-15 knots. These winds become northeasterly and strengthen Sunday night into Monday with an incoming low pressure system. Gusts up to 25 knots are likely, and there is a 10-20% chance of gale force gusts. Winds should become northwesterly and decrease into Tuesday.

For the open water discussion, refer to the NWS Marquette Area Forecast Discussion at weather.gov/mqt.

DLH WATCHES/WARNINGS/ADVISORIES
MN...None.
WI...None.
MARINE...None.