A storm system will carry showers and thunderstorms across the central United States on Election Day, Tuesday, November 3, with Chicago, Minneapolis, Kansas City and Dallas among the cities in its path. Morning is the wet part of the day, followed by an afternoon rebound to comfortable temperatures. Chilly air sits behind the system from the Northwest to the Rockies and the far northern Upper Midwest.
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Rain is the broad story for most polling places, but the Plains carry a real severe-weather edge. Storms were forecast to turn severe Monday from Texas to southwestern Missouri and southeastern Kansas, and the leftover threat runs into Tuesday along the southern end of the system.
Dallas and North Texas: a broken line of storms into Tuesday
The National Weather Service office serving Dallas and Fort Worth led its Monday afternoon update with an intensifying storm moving across the Plains. Its forecast described a broken line of showers and storms moving east Monday night into Tuesday, with damaging wind as the main hazard and a tornado possible within the line. A Tornado Watch was linked on the page. Rain should clear out Tuesday afternoon, and the rest of the week looks dry and pleasant with highs in the 70s.
An earlier political.org forecast roundup from October 29 said models showed storms reaching north-central Texas Tuesday morning with high wind, large hail and possible tornadoes, and quoted the National Weather Service as saying the severe threat was uncertain and details would sharpen in the coming days. Monday’s Fort Worth wording, with wind as the lead hazard, reflects that narrowing.
Chicago, Minneapolis and Kansas City: steady rain or a passing shower
AccuWeather’s Election Day outlook, written by senior meteorologist Alex Sosnowski and updated November 1, called rain likely in Minneapolis, Chicago and Kansas City, Missouri. Some locations may get several hours of steady rain while others see only a shower or two. Rain is also likely across parts of Kansas, Nebraska, Iowa, Wisconsin, Minnesota and Michigan, which could affect voters waiting outdoors. Wind gusts could cause sporadic power outages at some polling locations.
The local forecast offices were mid-update. The Chicago office showed no listed watches or warnings on its Monday afternoon map. The Twin Cities office led with Southwest flooding and gave no Tuesday text on its front page. The Kansas City office was promoting Missouri Winter Weather Preparedness Week, running November 2 to 6.
A Latin Times forecast summary dated Election Day put Oklahoma City, Kansas City and Omaha inside AccuWeather’s severe thunderstorm hazard zone, with possible high winds, large hail and isolated tornadoes. It cited the Fort Worth office’s 40% chance of showers and storms for November 3, a 60% chance of precipitation for Austin, and 30 to 40 mph gusts across Kansas that could make interstate travel more hazardous. CNN meteorologist Chris Dolce said Iowa could see rain for at least part of the day, with temperatures from the low 50s to the low 60s.
The forecast picture was not uniform. The same summary flagged Houston, Austin and San Antonio as places where rain and thunderstorms could deter voters, called Minnesota likely to stay wet, and said Ohio had become less likely to see significant rain. For Michigan, the models disagreed: some projected widespread rain across the northern and western parts of the state, while others showed only scattered showers. Forecasters expected a clearer picture of the track and intensity by the weekend before the vote.
The same report says AccuWeather expected the storm to be past its most intense phase by the time voting is under way, and that more than 30 million Americans had already voted early by late October, according to the University of Florida’s Election Lab, which limits how much weather can matter.
The Weather Prediction Center on the central storm track
Bob Oravec, a lead forecaster at the National Weather Service’s Weather Prediction Center, was quoted in the political.org roundup saying the middle of the country would probably be the most active area on Election Day. AccuWeather’s outlook says the severe risk may shift Tuesday and Wednesday into parts of Missouri, Arkansas, Tennessee, Mississippi and Louisiana, and flash flooding from Sunday to Monday in the Southwest could leave road closures lingering into Election Day.
Much of the rest of the country looks dry. Los Angeles, Seattle and San Francisco are forecast to stay dry, as are the Northeast, Virginia to the Carolinas and Georgia, and temperatures across much of the eastern half of the country are expected to run 5 to 15 degrees Fahrenheit above average.
What the written forecasts do not supply is city-level timing. The Weather Channel’s Election Day tracker, by Rob Shackelford, publishes its hourly and gust detail only as map images, so how the Dallas line lines up with polling hours is the question the final Tuesday-morning products will settle.
This article was produced with the assistance of AI and reviewed by Morning Overview editors prior to publication.
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