Longing for consistent warmth? You may have to wait until June
Our May outlook brings bad news if you’re looking for consistent warmth, but we’re still in for plenty of pleasant spring days.
Spring has tested our patience across most of Canada. Now that it is May, is consistent warm weather finally in sight? Please read on to see what we expect from the upcoming month.
But first, here is a quick recap of April.
Visit our Complete Guide to Spring 2022 for an in-depth look at the Spring Forecast, tips to plan for it and much more!
If you are someone who longs for consistent warm weather, April will just about always disappoint you. A temperature roller-coaster and parting shots from winter are typical of April and this year was no exception.
However, the temperature anomaly map below confirms that the temperature roller-coaster spent more time down in the dips than it did on the peaks this year. The various shades of blue and green stretching from the Pacific coast to southern Quebec highlight the widespread colder than normal temperatures.
Only Atlantic Canada, northern Quebec and parts of far Northern Canada saw above normal temperatures for April.
Early May will continue with the theme of a sputtering spring for much of Canada, but there will be some changes in where we will find colder than normal temperatures versus warmer weather.
Here is the temperature pattern that we expect for the first week of May and continuing through Mother’s Day. The biggest change will be across the Prairies where we expect a temporary pattern flip with several days of warmer weather and even a brief taste of summer.
Meanwhile, cooler than seasonal temperatures are expected to continue across B.C. and the Yukon. Also, cooler than seasonal temperatures across Ontario and Quebec will spread east into much of Atlantic Canada.
However, this does not mean that every day will be chilly. The temperature pattern will continue to be changeable, but the cooler days outweighing the warmer days.
How long will this pattern last? Confidence in exactly how the weather pattern will evolve during mid- and late May is actually rather low, but it appears that the triggers for a colder pattern will be fading and that gives us the potential for several days of warmer weather. However, at this point we don’t see any support for locking into a consistent warmer than normal pattern.
Therefore, it appears unlikely that we will flip the switch and suddenly find ourselves in a consistent early summer-like pattern during the month of May.
As a result, our forecast for mid- and late May calls for temperatures to be near or slightly cooler than normal across most of Canada, but we will see warm days at times.
While there is a lot of blue on the forecast map for mid and late May, we don’t expect that temperatures will be far off of seasonal across these regions. Also, keep in mind that "seasonal" steadily climbs through the month. Therefore, even a cool May will include many days of pleasant spring weather.
While we are uncertain about how quickly we will come out of our cooler spring pattern, there are two things that everyone can be certain about regarding the month of May. By the time that we get to the end of the month we will be knocking on the door of early summer, and we will be into the longest days of the year (in terms of daylight hours).
So, even if spring has tested your patience so far, I hope that you will enjoy the month of May with its abundance of flowers, dramatic changes in vegetation, and the promise of warmer days ahead.
