Quebec's May weather forecast is out and it's bad news for patio lovers

If you made it through Montreal's gloomy April weather telling yourself that May would be different, we have some unfortunate news.

The Old Farmer's Almanac has dropped its long-range forecast for southern Quebec, and May is not shaping up to be the warm, sunny redemption arc you may have been hoping for. Cool temperatures, unsettled skies, and a stormy finish to the month are all on the menu.

As always, the Almanac builds its outlooks using historical weather patterns, solar activity, and atmospheric trends. It's a broad seasonal read rather than a precise day-by-day forecast, but it often gives us a reasonable sense of what's coming our way.

Here's how May is shaping up for southern Quebec:

• May 1 to 3: Cool and damp to start, with showers across the region and snow still lingering in northern Quebec.
  
• May 4 to 7: Chilly and breezy, with dry skies in southern Quebec but gusty conditions further east.
• May 8 to 11: Cold and unsettled, with flurries possible in northern Quebec and overcast skies across the south.
• May 12 to 15: The first real bright spot of the month, with mild temperatures and fair skies.
• May 16 to 19: Mild but showery.
• May 20 to 23: Cool and windy, with scattered showers returning.
• May 24 to 27: Dry and pleasant, with fair skies settling in for a few days.
• May 28 to 31: A stormy finish, with strong winds, rain, and snow returning to far northern Quebec to close out the month.

The window around May 12 to 15 and the dry stretch from May 24 to 27 are about as good as it gets in this forecast. Everything else is pretty uninspiring.

That seems to track with what weather experts at MétéoMédia have been saying.

The weather network's latest spring outlook points to an incoming El Niño pattern as the main culprit, which historically pushes warmth toward Western Canada while leaving the east with cooler, more unsettled conditions.

Meteorologist Nicolas Lessard recently reported that while brief warm spells are still possible, the overall trend for early summer should lean cool. What MétéoMédia calls "felt summer" (the point when temperatures durably settle in around 23 to 25°C) normally arrives around mid-June in southern Quebec. This year, it could come even later than that.

The silver lining, if you can call it that, is that the Farmer's Almanac predicts temps going way up in July and August, forecasting record heat and back-to-back stretches of intense warmth. So summer may be slow to show up this year, but the theory is it'll make up for lost time.

For now though, your patio furniture can probably stay in storage a little longer.