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Heat and Fire Weather Concerns in the West

Heat will build over the Intermountain West and the Southwest the next couple of days. Lightning from dry thunderstorms can create new fire starts and combined with gusty winds may cause a fire to rapidly grow in Oregon and northern California. Elevated fire weather conditions are also expected in the Great Basin. Flash flooding will be possible in Arizona and west Texas, especially in burn scars. Read More >

Overview

A strong area of low pressure north of the International Border lifted a warm front across the Northland the morning of July 26, 2021, and brought a very warm, moist airmass into the region. As the cold front approached during the late afternoon and evening hours, storms developed across north- central Minnesota in this highly-sheared and very unstable airmass. The first storms developed near Red Lake in Grand Fork's CWA and produced a trio of tornadoes before entering into the Duluth CWA in Cass County and producing very large hail near Bena. Storms then moved through the Grand Rapids area producing extensive tree damage before continuing to move to the southeast through the Twin Ports into northwest Wisconsin producing wind damage and hail.

More storms developed behind this initial wave and weren't severe initially. However, once reaching the Twin Ports area, they intensified across northern Douglas County in northwest Wisconsin and brought very large hail to the Poplar area along with areas of tree damage across portions of Douglas, Bayfield, Sawyer and Iron counties before pushing out of the CWA. These storms also produced rainfall of 1.5" to almost 3" near Hayward, although no flooding was reported.

This event occurred with the Duluth radar being offline due to technical issues. Storm spotters were indispensable for this event along with the KMVX and KMPX radars. NWS Duluth would like to thank the spotters for their assistance in this event.

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