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They took an umbrella with them. It might rain.

Connect these two sentences with the phrase in case.

The right answer is:

They took an umbrella with them in case it rained/ should rain.

Can you tell me why the following sentence is wrong and why the answer is right?

They took an umbrella with them in case it might rain

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This is one of those questions whose answer might puzzle a great many native English speakers.

In everyday conversation people are as likely to use all three constructions - rained, should rain and might rain as well as could rain and did rain - not that I'm encouraging you to.

I can't find a clear explanation online of why the construction requires either rained or should rain and forbids might rain.

However, Google Books Ngram Viewer indicates that while rained and should rain have juggled for top position down the years, rained has become much more popular than should rain - while might rain has now virtually dropped out of usage.

A number of questions have been posted on online forums concerning the Verb tenses to follow in case and you might find the following links useful although they don't deal directly with your question:

Usages of "in case" and "should" inversion usages of "in case" together with "should" https://forum.wordreference.com/threads/in-case-you-should-would.521437/

https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=in+case+it+should+rain%2Cin+case+it+might+rain%2Cin+case+it+rained&year_start=1800&year_end=2000&corpus=15&smoothing=3&share=&direct_url=t1%3B%2Cin%20case%20it%20should%20rain%3B%2Cc0%3B.t1%3B%2Cin%20case%20it%20might%20rain%3B%2Cc0%3B.t1%3B%2Cin%20case%20it%20rained%3B%2Cc0

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