right this sounds a little silly, but one of minor reasons we are considering emigrating is for a better climate. we live in cold, wet and windy scotland at the moment, and unfortunately the weather is like this all year round! we are very outdoors based and we would like nice hot summer weather and take a snowy, dry and sunny winter any day!

i have been keeping on eye on temps for some time now and as far as i can tell NS appears just as wet and mild all year round as old scotland....... i think they have more in common than i initially realised!

anyway, we have now also started to consider ottawa and montreal....... but i wondered if some NS residents (possibly ex-scots) could post on how the weather compares?!

Yes, it is fairly wet and can be foggy. We do get snow, but it is wet snow (as opposed to the drier stuff in New Brunswick and further west). The temperatures fluctuate up and down quite a lot here in the winter too, so the snow might only be on the ground for a few days before it melts.

We do get some lovely clear winter days, but spring is wet and soggy. Most of the fall is lovely, bug free and perfect temperatures, but this can be interspersed with the odd hurricane

Having previously lived over 40 years in Scotland, I can vouch that we definitely get less rain, wind and cloud here. Our temps are not mild in NS though. They are extreme compared to the uk, ranging between -20Cs to -30Cs in the winter to +30Cs and humid in the summer - so 60Cs difference between mid summer and mid winter.

This will be my 3rd winter here. Winter is constantly freezing (usually -15C to -30Cs) for about 3-4 months. We got more snow last year than the year before. As it doesn't get above zero it doesn't melt unless it's the first snowfalls in late Nov/Dec. Our snow is quite powdery and its difficult to form a snowball. It's easily blown around in the tiniest of breezes so thats why you can see quite large patches of the ground exposed. It can be very icy. The sea freezes at the beach which is a spectacular sight.

We rarely get fog up in Pictou County.

Spring comes late, around May. It can be quite rainy (grass boggy) but I was looking back at some pics of my mum's trip here early May 08 and I have lots of photos with blue skies in Halifax and up here at our local beach too - both sets of pics have people out and about without jackets.

Early June is when it starts to get nice and warm, then all of a sudden towards the end of June it gets really hot (in the 30Cs). This stays much the same over the summer months of July and August usually but this year August was cooler (but still humid) and pretty wet (not typical so I am told). Lots of blackfly, mozzies and noseeums during July/August.

September is lovely. Really warm days and cooler nights - very fresh with little or no humidity. Less biting critters around but can still get you.

In October the temps reduce but you can get some really nice warm days. The fall colours are stunning. Towards the end of the month (around now) we have had our first minus temps during the night. Today was lovely and sunny and you could walk around without a jacket by lunchtime. No biting critters!

One thing that I did notice about NS (and probably most of Canada) is that it's dark just after 9pm in the summer. In Scotland it was still light often as late as 11pm. Here, we get lots of lovely red skies at night too

Here are some pics taken in Jan/Feb 2007. The first is a close-up pic of snow. The last pic shows the kids standing on the breakers at our local beach at Melmberby. It was our first time at the beach in winter.

Depends where about in NS you are. We are north shore (so I am told I just say live near NB) and been here since April and only seen 1-2 days of fog. Had some rain but had a lot more warm sunny days. Earlier this week has been cold but today in the sun was great.

Halifax averages about 50" of precipitation a year. Approx. 15% is snow.
Toronto averages about 30"
Vancouver averages 100"

That's combined rain and snow. It can vary from year to year. For instance this year has been considerably wetter than normal throughout most of Canada and NS was no exception. I believe we are now sitting at about 110".

NS is one of the wettest places in Canada and it can be very windy in coastal areas, depending on season. The best word to describe it would be tempestuous. If you want dry consider the interior of BC or anywhere on the prairies.

thanks some good info there.

it was halifax we were considering, as i need to be fairly close to a large city for my work in the construction industry

climate based i think calgary sounds perfect, however when balancing up cost of living, house prices etc etc then that starts to go against the major reasons why we want to move..... whereas weather is fairly minor.

we had thought ottawa or montreal may be nice balance of climate v's cost v's quality of life but we wont know until we get there next summer for a reccie. however everytime i look on MLS i am amazed by how far money will stretch in terms of houses.

Bloody weather ruined our reccie August 2006. It poured for most of it and was foggy aswell. We had one day of sun and it was hot. Was a real shame. Mind you, if i was that worried about weather i wouldnt be in Wicklow now.

Thirty year averages 1971-2000 for Halifax

Or grab a map of Nova Scotia pick a location and see if it is in the list linked below.
Thirty year averages 1971-2000 for 51 locations in Nova Scotia.

Thirty year averages 1971-2000 for Ottawa
Thirty year averages 1971-2000 for Montreal

You can check how the provinces rank in 70 different weather categories, or do a city search and see how the cities rank in the same 70 categories.

Cheers
Steve

Steve_P

Great web site. Thanks for the info.

M. from cloudy ol' Halifax.

as i thought, halifax looks very weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeet!

in fact considerably more wet even than where we are just now!

ottawa and montreal do fair considerably better weather wise, but i do like the idea of the prairie regions also as it appears they hardly ever rain and dont get tooooooooo snowy!

Hi kancell

We lived in Calgary and found it was a nice city to live in. We had to moved due to a down turn in the economy in 1998. Its a young city and good for a family to live in. We found cost of living slightly higher than living in Suffolk, due to being a city.
Winters were more bearable than when we lived on the Prairies and in rural Ontario. We lived 200km north of Ottawa before we moved back to England. Ottawa tends to be govt orientated jobs and to us seemed more european in culture compared to Calgary.

Being in a trade job I was say Calgary is a better bet to move to. The houses are cheaper in Canada than in the UK. We found modern houses in Canada are pretty cheaply made i.e wood(OSB board)/plastic/aluminium. Out of interest you can built a 2300 sqft house Canadian style home in the UK for £80-100K plus building plot.
The thing to remember once your in Canada you earn dollars instead of pounds you realise costs of living/against income is not much difference between the UK and Canada.

I agree finding a good job more important than the weather. I found Canada is colder, wetter, hotter, more humid than England, but you adjust your life style to deal with the extremes.

I would look at Calgary being in the building trade as it has a better economy than NS.

Hudd

Hi Hudd,

the idea of the climate within the prairie regions sounds perfect, however we love the outdoors life and are always away mountain biking, camping, hill walking and exploring forests etc. we also hope to take up skiing again as it should possibly be more accessible in these areas. hence im not sure the flat barren landscapes would really suit us.

i also have worries about the financial side of things within a boom town such as calgary. i am an engineer and my gf a teacher, so both have reasonably good jobs here and i'm sure we would be able to get work within alberta. however one of the primary reasons for moving is to slice a chunk off our mortgage and from what i hear its hard to get a reasonable house for under $400k in calgary, whereas $300k gets you a nice one in the other provinces.

we're in the process of booking our reccie and have a house swap arranged for ottawa, so i guess we'll just have to have a look next summer and see what we think. if its not right then we shall definitely have a look at NS and possibly some of the other prairie regions. my biggest worry with NS was availability of jobs, as i may be limiting my options in such a small city..... well compared to the others i have mentioned.

It's not called Nova Scotia (New Scotland) for nothing!!

aye, i gathered that..... the clue is in the title i guess eh....

nah i just wondered whether it was due to landscapes or the first settlers..... or whether it was a carbon copy of good old wet scotland

They wouldn't, if that's indeed what you're after. Consider British Columbia. There are many different climates within the province - only the coast is known for its rain. Most of the province is forested and mountainous.