Halloween Climatology

Do you remember the last really warm Halloween day? What about the coldest Halloween you remember? Have you ever gone Trick-or-Treating in the rain? The weather doesn’t care what day it is and Halloween is no exception. But historically, what is Halloween usually like?

On average most of our area sees highs in the low to mid 70s by late October, but there have been some extremes. Last Halloween was quite warm and for Starkville and Tupelo it was the warmest on record, reaching 88 and 89 degrees respectively. In Columbus it was still quite warm (90°) but did not reach the record of 92° set in 1982.

The opposite has also occurred. The coolest Halloween highs in Columbus, Starkville and Tupelo were 56°, 39° and 44° respectively and were reached in 1993 (and 1988 in Columbus). Halloween nights have been equally chilly.

All three locations have seen lows below freezing on Halloween. Columbus saw a low of 30° in 1993, a seemingly chilly year. Tupelo and Starkville also had some very chilly nights before Columbus began it’s period of record. Starkville cooled off to 26 degrees in 1917 and Tupelo dropped to 24 degrees in 1980.

There have also been some very wet Halloweens. Statistically there is approximately a 25% chance that there will be measurable rain on Halloween for our viewing area. 2015 was the last year that we saw rain on Halloween when Columbus and Tupelo saw 1.62″ and .73″ inches of rain. For Columbus, that was the record wettest Halloween on record. For Tupelo the record rainfall was a bit more unprecedented. Back in 1940, Tupelo received 6.28 inches of rain which marks the 7th wettest single day in Tupelo history.

This year will be somewhere in the middle. We will stay dry, but it will be a little bit cooler than average. Most will stay in the upper 60s during the day and will cool down into the upper 40s overnight.