Maps: Scary Halloween weather volatility

Welcome to Minnesota, Land of 10,000 weather possibilities.

Here, on the last evening in October, kids show up at your door dressed in all manner of costume. Cute little ghosts. Superheroes. Teenage zombie apocalypse. Future weather people.

The weather maps can turn downright scary as the November witching hour draws near. Halloween is the holiday each year where weather can range from balmy shades of July, to icy breezes of January.

• 83 degrees warmest Halloween temp on record at Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport. (1950)

• 26 degrees coldest Halloween maximum temp in the metro. (1873)

• 8.2 inches maximum snowfall on Halloween (1991, 28.4 inches eventual storm total)

In case you've ever wondered just how chaotic and extreme weather can be for Halloween in Minnesota, take a look at the Halloween climatology from the Minnesota Climatology Working Group.

Halloween is typically a time of crunchy leaves on the ground, and a bit of chill in the air. High temperatures in the Twin Cities are generally in the 40's and 50's. It is more common for the daily high on Halloween to be in the 60's than in the 30's. 70's tend to be a bit rare, with only eight Halloween high temperatures being 70 degrees or above.

The warmest Halloween on record was 83 degrees in 1950, with the second coldest maximum temperature on record arriving one year later with a high of 30 in 1951. The coldest Halloween maximum temperature was a chilly 26 degrees back in 1873. The last fifteen years have had some balmy Halloween afternoons with a 71 degrees in 2000, and some quite cool ones as well with a 34 in 2002.

Small wonder then that our weather maps look chaotic heading into Halloween in the Crazy Weather Year of 2014. The medium range models often flip flop like a small-mouth bass jumping on the dock 10 days to two weeks out. The maps for this Halloween have gone from a frigid Halloween with flurries, to a warm rain, to something in between.

The latest versions of Halloween 2014 trend wet according the model from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Global Forecast System. The GFS has been ginning up a storm and tracking rain toward Minnesota by Halloween, followed by a bracingly cold Canadian shot.

Did I mention the possibility of a post Florida hurricane off the east coast?

The European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts' first crack at Oct. 31 paints a much different and milder picture. Milder southerly breezes ahead of a storm in the Rockies?

The GFS is cranking out temps in the 50s at this point, at least until the next model run.

Stay tuned as the two primary medium range forecast models battle for Halloween supremacy.