Austin Friday Weather: Halloween Warms to 76.3 With Its Rain Chance Down to 28 Percent, but Election Day Turns to Thunderstorms at 55
The 5 p.m. feed split the week in two: Friday's rain is easing and Halloween now looks warm and mostly dry, while Tuesday's Election Day code jumped to thunderstorms - the strongest election-day signal yet.
Friday's rain is letting up on schedule. The station's live Open-Meteo feed, read at about 4:05 p.m., put Austin at 66.5 degrees under overcast skies, and the day's own numbers softened from the afternoon file: the rain code eased from moderate rain (63) to rain (61), the high settled at 70.0, and the precipitation chance fell from 86 percent to 77 percent. The last evening of early voting is still damp - just less so than the morning promised.
Halloween is the forecast's big winner. Saturday's high jumped from 73.2 degrees in the afternoon reading to 76.3, its code eased to drizzle (51), and its rain chance fell again, from 33 percent to 28 percent - the third straight reading to soften Saturday. For trick-or-treating, the Sixth Street closures and a 6:30 p.m. kickoff at Darrell K. Royal-Texas Memorial Stadium, that is now a warm evening with a jacket-level rain risk, not a washout plan.
Election Day moved the other way, and voters should notice. Tuesday's code jumped from rain showers (81) to thunderstorms (95), its precipitation chance rose from 53 to 55 percent, and the high held warm at 79.6 with a low of 68.6. Thunderstorms on a day when Travis County opens 201 polling places are a different planning problem from showers: build in extra time, and expect the morning and evening rushes to run wet.
The frame around those two days is calm. Sunday is overcast and warm at 82.4 degrees with a 2 percent rain chance, Monday reaches 85.6 at 25 percent, and Wednesday and Thursday both clear completely under code 0 - highs of 79.0 and 79.9 and rain chances of 2 and 5 percent. All figures are single-feed reads and will be re-read on the next cycle.
