For Whom the Reign Falls

Now

Light rain, cool. To paraphrase an old quotation, the rain falls on Democrats and Republicans alike. Light rain was scattered through most of the Washington metro area this Election Day afternoon, but the heaviest amounts were well to the south in North Carolina, where Raleigh had already picked up over 1" as of 4pm. Once again temperatures have struggled to make it out of the lower half of the 50s; the high at National was 56°, but Dulles was only 53°.

As a low pressure area developing over the Southeast becomes more organized and moves northeastward, rain will increase tonight, tapering off tomorrow.

Tonight and Tomorrow

Rain, continued cool. Rain will become steadier and heavier tonight. Temperatures will remain mostly in the low 50s. Rain will diminish and become more intermittent around the middle of the day tomorrow, tapering off during the afternoon, but skies will remain cloudy with highs near 60°.

For the outlook through the rest of the week and into the weekend, scroll down to Jason's post below, and for CapitalWeather.com's Winter Weather Outlook, scroll down to Matt's post.

Political Storms

Andrew's Sunday Undercast explored some weather-related political issues. What about the effect of the weather on voting itself? Although conventional wisdom says rain depresses voter turnout, a site visitor noted last week that The Hill newspaper recently quoted Yale professor and "voter-turnout expert" Donald Green saying that "cliches about the weather on Election Day affecting turnout are bunk." On the other hand, University of Georgia visiting professor Brad Gomez says, in a study to be published in the Journal of Politics, that every inch of rain reduces overall voter turnout by 1%. I guess voter forecasting isn't the exact science that weather prediction is!