Weather in May to be much like April, but forecast says warmth likely on the way

The first two weeks of May will feel a lot like April and the forecast for the latter half of the month is still very much up in the air, says a senior climatologist with Environment Canada.

“We’ve changed the month. We’re not necessarily changing the weather,” Dave Phillips told CBC Radio’s Metro Morning on Wednesday.

May tends to be less cruel than April, but there is a lot of uncertainty about May this year in the Greater Toronto Area, he said. The first half of the month will see normal or below temperatures.

No record warmth is appearing in the forecasting models, he added, and the parade of low pressure systems will continue.

The weather in May could be warmer or colder than usual.

“We don’t know,” Philllips said. “I mean, we run the models. And all of the models, the 40 runs of models, there are as many saying warmer as saying colder.”

Phillips noted that U.S. forecasting models are predicting a warmer and wetter than normal May, but whether that forecast applies to Toronto, Ontario and the rest of Canada remains to be seen.

“We just think there’s a lot of uncertainty. What you see is what you are going to get at the beginning. But we know that May is just, on average, six degrees warmer than April. It’s going to feel warmer, but it doesn’t look like it’s going to be as record warm as we had last May,” he said.

Phillips said Toronto had a very long winter, followed by a “poor fall.” The winter had about 30 per cent more snow than the previous winter. Consequently, it has been a long time since the city could say it had a decent spell of good weather, he said.

“April is over. We just hope that May can bring something,” he said. ‘I am hoping that the Americans are right with their models,” he said.

As for the June, July and August forecast, it’s too early to say, although some reports say the summer months will be warmer than normal, he noted.

“My sense is things are looking up, but we can’t be so sure.”