Fairfax, MN 55332 Weather

This Hazardous Weather Outlook is for portions of central and southern Minnesota, and west central Wisconsin.

Day one

Today and Tonight.

No hazardous weather is expected at this time.

Days two through seven

Sunday through Friday.

No hazardous weather is expected at this time.

Spotter information statement

SKYWARN spotter activation will not be needed.

Key messages

- A few hit and miss showers through the day today, but nothing that will significantly impact plans.

- A slow moving low will move across southern MN Monday into Tuesday. This system will have near record high moisture content for November, with a widespread soaking rain expected.

Discussion

Issued at 225 AM CDT Sat Oct 31 2026

We've seen a few patches of rain (and even a rumble of thunder or two!) move slowly north across southern MN through the night. This rain is moving in ahead of a pool of high theta-e air in the 925- 850mb layer coming up out of the Iowa. As this pool of low-level moisture moves north, it's running into an h5 ridge axis that extends from the southeast US, up into southwest MN and continuing on into Alberta. This combo of low level theta-e advection and upper ridging results in weak forcing and a setup that models have been really struggling to resolve where these little batches of showers pop-up. The general idea though as that we will see a band of scattered showers lift north through the morning, with showers cutting off from south to north this afternoon. For trick-or- treaters, this rain will be pretty much done by the time we get to sunset, so you shouldn't need to add an umbrella to your kid's costumes.

Going into Sunday, outside of an occasional sprinkle, we look dry. We also look to loose the low clouds, but should hold on to upper clouds. The NBM looks a little aggressive with the clearing it has for Sunday, but how much we clear out will determine how warm we get for the first day of November. If we clear out as much as the NBM indicates, then we'll see highs in the upper 50s in western MN, with mid 60s in eastern MN and western WI. If we stay mostly cloudy with mid/upper level cloud cover, then you can probably take about 5 degrees off the highs we currently have for Sunday.

Next week looks to start on a very wet note. We continue to see some spread in the models with the track of a surface low Monday night into Tuesday, but there is a general consensus on this low moving across southern MN. The current NBM winds show a surface low going from roughly Canby to the Twin Cities Monday night, then slowly into northwest WI on Tuesday. PWATs with this system continue to run nearly off the charts for November, with the EPS mean values of 1.5" running about 4.5 standard deviations above normal. This high moisture content paired with a LLJ in excess of 50 kts will create zone of strong and very moist isentropic lift ahead of the low during the day on Monday, which will result a shield of moderate to heavy rain and embedded thunderstorms moving across the area, with a widespread 1-2" of rain expected with just this. Monday night, as the low moves into MN, we'll see this WAA precip transition to deformation precipitation within the cold conveyor belt (though the air in this cold conveyor belt is not November cold!). Tuesday afternoon, we'll also likely see another round of showers and thunderstorms develop ahead of this systems cold front from eastern MN into western WI. When all is said and done, some very anomalous rainfall amounts for November look likely. Where we double dip on the isentropic lift and deformation forcing north of the surface low track, a storm total of 2-3+" of rain still looks like with this storm. Given where the NBM currently shows the surface low track, these high end rain amounts look most likely from western into central MN. As for the severe weather potential; moisture, forcing, and shear will be ample, but instability, especially surface based, looks to be lacking. Not helping is the nocturnal timing for the surface low passage, but we could see some severe potential into western WI Tuesday afternoon depending on the timing of the front.

How long this system lingers is a bit uncertain, with the NBM continuing to slowly step down PoPs through the day on Wednesday into Thursday given the timing/placement differences in the models. With that said, outside of the Canadian, models are trending toward rain ending in the MPX area Wednesday afternoon. After that, it's split flow and a very meh weather pattern for us. This will likely start another 1-2 week long period where we see little, if any precipitation, with temperatures continuing to run 5-10 degrees above normal. There are no signs of winter paying us a visit through the first half of November.

Aviation

Issued at 538 AM CDT Sat Oct 31 2026

Behind the batch of rain moving across western WI at 6am, not much more rain is expected in the MPX area the rest of today. We did start pulling back on precipitation mentions quite a bit, though with moist southerly flow through tonight, you can't completely rule out the brief shower, but with little agreement with where/when additional activity will occur, kept TAFs dry for the most part after this morning. MVFR cigs will slowly lower through the day, but confidence in cigs decreases tonight, with a mixture of VFR conditions developing across southern MN and the possibility for the development of low stratus/fog in central MN. For now, kept a similar idea to the going TAFs.

KMSP: The 3z RAP turned out to have the right idea back when doing the 6z TAF with the rain coming through this morning and it shows no more rain after the round that is just clearing the metro, so went with a dry forecast this period. For tonight, RAP soundings continue to show the low level cloud cover clearing out by 9z.

/OUTLOOK FOR KMSP/ SUN: VFR. Wind SSE 5-10G15 kts. MON: MVFR/IFR. SHRA. Wind SE 10-15G25 kts. TUE: MVFR. -SHRA likely. Wind SE bcmg NW in aftn 10-15G25 kts.

Watches, warnings and advisories

MN: None. WI: None.