Rain Will Trick-or-Treat in 20 States This Halloween, Wearing Its Only Costume: Everyone's Ruined Costume

Halloween has survived pagans, popcorn balls and the year everybody dressed as Squid Game. This weekend it faces its scariest costume yet: a radar map.

Trick-or-treaters in more than 20 states are expected to have rain showers haunt their Halloween, FOX Weather reported. Twenty states. That is not a forecast. That is a franchise.

The worst news is for Southern California, a place where umbrellas are mostly decorative and rain is treated like a celebrity sighting. "A good soaking of moderate-to-heavy rain will reach southern California by Saturday," the FOX Forecast Center said. "Notably, Los Angeles and San Diego have not seen a lot of rain on Halloween."

Notably is doing heroic work there. San Diego has seen only nine Halloweens with measurable rain since 1850, the last one in 1987. The previous wet Halloween had Reagan in office, hair in volume and a city that has now forgotten how to drive in a drizzle, let alone in a cape.

Weather.com put it gently: San Diego will likely get its first measurable Halloween rain in 39 years. Thirty-nine years. Somewhere a San Diego child will meet a puddle and assume it is part of the haunted house.

Central Arizona, including Phoenix, has a Level 2 out of 4 flash flood risk on Halloween. The entire state of Louisiana has a Level 1. Louisiana treats Level 1 flooding the way other states treat a Tuesday, so the real horror will be the parents shouting "keep the bag above your head" like a combat drill.

The Midwest has the opposite problem. Temperatures are expected to run 10 to 20 degrees above average, with highs in the 70s and lower 80s. Indianapolis has logged 25 days of 70 degrees or warmer; the record is 27, and it may be tied or broken on Halloween. Indiana will hand out candy in shorts. Every kid dressed as a snowman will sue.

Then there is the Northeast, the one region where the weather behaves. "Don't worry about the weather Saturday evening in the Northeast," Weather.com said, which is the most comforting sentence ever printed about New England and almost certainly a trap. The nice weather is forecast to end Sunday, when rain and gusty winds arrive, right on time to soak the leftover pumpkins.

And because America cannot experience anything without betting on it, FOX Weather noted that prediction market Kalshi put a 51% chance on rain in San Francisco over the weekend. A coin flip with extra steps. Somewhere, a man has a mortgage riding on drizzle.

Weather.com tried to be reassuring: "Fortunately, we don't have a major storm in the forecast Saturday. But there may be weather headaches for some." Some, in this case, means everyone dressed as paper, cardboard or a good idea.

The advice from forecasters is practical: a rain jacket over the costume, or a warmer costume altogether. That is the end of the sexy-anything costume in 20 states. This year, the most frightening outfit in America is a sensible poncho.

So prepare accordingly. Carry an umbrella. Waterproof the candy. And if a small, soaked figure knocks on your San Diego door Saturday night, do not panic. It is not a ghost. It is just 1987, finally coming back for its rain.