Will Halloween be a washout this year? It’s a possibility, but that might not stop Mainers from trick-or-treating Friday night.

Rain will move into Maine on Thursday, giving the drought-stricken state a much-needed soaking. The rain will linger overnight into Halloween, but the steady precipitation should wind down by early evening. Temperatures will fall into the 40s, and a breeze will add an extra chill to the air, said Jerry Combs, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Gray.

“You’ll definitely need to bring an umbrella and bundle up while trick-or-treating,” he said Monday.

The weather service is predicting a 40% chance of precipitation at 6 p.m. on Friday, with those chances a little bit higher in the mountains and foothills.

Mainers are used to less-than-ideal conditions on Halloween but rarely let the weather stop them from getting out for trick-or-treating. Sometimes, kids are bundled up with winter coats over their costumes; other years don’t even require long sleeves.

But then there are the handful of years when strong storms put a real damper on the holiday.

In 2019, a windy storm late on Halloween night caused widespread power outages. That storm came on the heels of an Oct. 17 nor’easter that knocked out power to tens of thousands of Mainers.

Two years earlier, a quick but ferocious storm that caused widespread damage throughout the state delayed Halloween celebrations in some spots.

The 2017 storm barreled into Maine late on Oct. 29 with a wall of heavy rain and near hurricane-force winds, knocking out power to nearly two-thirds of Maine, topping even the historic ice storm of 1998. Uprooted trees fell on homes and cars, roads were blocked by downed power lines, and traffic lights stopped working.

With thousands of people still without power on Halloween and some roads still covered with downed trees and lines, local officials asked people to hold off on trick-or-treating for a couple days.

In 2011, a pre-Halloween storm dropped as much as 20 inches of snow and downed power lines across the state. The nor’easter — sometimes referred to as “Snowtober” — was particularly strong in York County, where more than 207,000 customers lost power.

That storm set records at the Portland International Jetport, where 5.2 inches made it the largest single snowfall on record in October, according to the National Weather Service. The previous record of 3.6 inches was set on Oct. 27, 1962, and repeated on Oct. 22, 1969.

In Sanford and Acton, where about 20 inches of snow fell, kids traded in their Halloween costumes for sleds and snow forts. Several towns rescheduled trick-or-treating to the following weekend.

One of New England’s most memorable storms happened during the last week of October in 1991. Initially called the Halloween Nor’easter and later known as “The Perfect Storm,” it lashed the East Coast with high waves and coastal flooding. The storm resulted in 13 deaths, six of them from the sinking of the fishing boat Andrea Gail, which later inspired a book and movie.

After the storm, President George H.W. Bush declared five counties in Maine as disaster areas. The storm did $7.9 million in damage in Maine, mostly in York County. Portland saw tides 3 feet above normal, among the highest since record-keeping began in 1914.