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Photo by DXR, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
Ottawa in May
sweet spot · the best month to go
The year in Ottawa
Tap a month for its page
- JanJOttawa in January: avoid
- FebFOttawa in February: avoid
- MarMOttawa in March: avoid
- AprAOttawa in April: ok
- MayMOttawa in May: sweet spot
- JunJOttawa in June: good, busy
- JulJOttawa in July: good, busy
- AugAOttawa in August: good, busy
- SepSOttawa in September: sweet spot
- OctOOttawa in October: ok
- NovNOttawa in November: avoid
- DecDOttawa in December: avoid
- Sweet spot
- Good
- OK
- Avoid
- Busy
Plan this trip
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Flights
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Where to stay
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Luxury
Things to do
Car hire
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Travel insurance
Check whether your bank card or home insurance already covers this trip.
If the trip needs a visa, the travel agent or visa centre usually sells the cover it asks for.
Mobile data (eSIM)
Your own plan's EU roaming may already cover this.
Renting a pocket Wi-Fi is the other common way to stay connected.
These are sites people in book with. Each opens in a new tab, on the site's own pages.
The numbers
| Daily high | 19°C |
|---|---|
| Nightly low | 8°C |
| Feels like, afternoon | 17°C |
| Rainy days, 1 mm or more | 9 · 91 mm |
| Humidity | 67% |
| Sunshine | 9.9 h/day |
| Daylight | 14.9 h/day |
| Crowds | 100 / 100, higher is quieter |
Ten-year averages for this calendar month. A rainy day is one with at least 1 mm of rain, as a weather station counts it. The model these figures come from drizzles more than a rain gauge, the more so the warmer the month, so its days count from 2 mm, rising to 5 mm in the hottest.
Weather read at Parliament Hill, 12 km from the airport (YOW): ten years of ERA5 and ERA5-Land reanalysis, through Open-Meteo's open data.
How busy it gets
Ottawa in pictures
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Wladyslaw, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons
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Wladyslaw, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons
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Matti Blume, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
What to pack
- Warm layers for the evenings, which drop to about 8°C.
- A packable rain jacket for the 9 or so rainy days.
- Sun protection: about 10 hours of sunshine a day.
Each line is a threshold over the ten-year figures above, not advice from anywhere else.
Before you go
Type A and B plugs at 120 V. Drives on the right. The currency is the Canadian dollar. No UK Foreign Office advice against travel. US State Department: Level 1: Exercise Normal Precautions. Everything for Canada: cost of living, languages, emergency numbers and health.
On arrival in Ottawa: the apps, paying, getting around, tipping and the emergency numbers.
May elsewhere
In May from
The other months at Ottawa
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