What is typical Halloween weather in Minnesota?

So what’s your typical Halloween weather like in Minnesota? The answer varies a lot from year to year.

Halloween 2021

This year looks chilly but dry, and probably not too far from what lands as average Halloween weather. Highs in the 40s Sunday and a cool northwest breeze will bring a chill for trick or treaters.

Halloween climatology: Highly variable

Because Halloween occurs in late October during a seasonal transition, weather conditions can vary a lot. It’s pretty likely going to be warm on July 4th and cold on Christmas. But Halloween can bring 70s or the biggest snow event in Twin Cities history.

Here’s a great commentary on the range of Halloween weather conditions historically in Minnesota from the Minnesota DNR Climate Working Group.

Halloween is typically a time of crunchy leaves on the ground, a bit of chill in the air, and lots of candy. High temperatures in the Twin Cities are generally in the 40s and 50s. It is more common for the daily high on Halloween to be in the 60s than in the 30s. 70s tend to be rare, with only eight Halloween high temperatures being 70 degrees or above or about one in eighteen years. The warmest Halloween on record was 83 degrees in 1950, with one of the coldest one year later with a high of 30 in 1951. The coldest Halloween maximum temperature was a bone-chilling 26 degrees back in 1873. The last twenty years have had some balmy Halloween afternoons, like the 71-degree F high in 2000. We've had some chilly ones as well, like in 2017, when the temperature never rose above 35 F at MSP. The area has not seen a Halloween washout, with measurable precipitation during the evening, since 1997.

Measurable precipitation has occurred on Halloween only 26% of the time in the Twin Cities, or 38 times out of 145 years. The most rain recorded was in 1979 with .78 inches. In 1991 .85 inches of precipitation fell, which was snow. In spite of the 1991 Halloween Blizzard, measurable snow on Halloween is about as rare as getting a full-sized candy bar in your trick-or-treat bag. Since 1872 there's been enough snow to measure only six times: 0.6 in 1884; 0.2 in 1885; 1.4 in 1932; 0.4 in 1954; 0.5 in 1995; and of course 8.2 inches, with the opening round of the Halloween Blizzard in 1991. Thus there has been measurable snow on only 4% of the days.

Here’s a chart with Halloween weather since 1991. The high and low temperatures are the first 2 numbers. Last year the high temperature was 55 degrees on Halloween. Two years ago it was 36.