Climate & Statistics

Montréal vs the World: How Few Truly Good Days We’ve Had in 2026 (And Where We Rank Among 260 Cities)

We took 125 days of weather observations from the Montréal-Trudeau airport station, applied a strict definition of a “truly good day,” and compared the result to 259 other cities around the world. Montréal lands in the bottom 6%.

If the first article in this series (“How Many Truly Good Days Has Montréal Had in 2026?”) landed Montréal at the bottom of a 15-city sample, the obvious next question was whether that ranking holds up against a real global benchmark. So we expanded the comparison to 260 cities across every continent — capitals, financial centres, tropical hubs, mountain towns, and other Canadian cities. Montréal’s position barely moved. It still lives in the basement.

The strict definition of a “truly good day” is the same one we used before. It has to clear five tests at once.

Out of 260 cities, only 14 rank below Montréal. Most of them are inside the Arctic Circle.

Where Montréal Lands Globally

By Montréal’s actual observed 2026 number (3 good days), the city ranks #246 of 260. That puts it in the bottom 6% of the world. Here’s the distribution of all 260 cities by tier:

The Top 25: Where the Weather Has Been Effortless

The cities at the top of the list are mostly tropical, subtropical, or desert climates where January through April routinely produces dry, warm, sunny weather. Notice the pattern: India dominates, the Gulf states show up early, and the southwestern US (Phoenix, Tucson) gets in despite being “winter.”

Where Montréal Sits — and What’s Around It

Here’s the awkward part. Montréal’s 3 good days drop it to #246. The cities clustered around it tell the story: cold, cloudy, often northern European or Russian capitals, plus Canada’s other winter cities.

Where Other Major Cities Landed

For the curious, here’s a quick sample of how major cities compare in the same window. Several common reference points to anchor the scale:

Even Toronto — Montréal’s most direct climate cousin — has nearly three times as many good days in a normal year. London’s reputation for grim weather doesn’t hold up against Montréal’s 2026 either.

A Quick Note on the Numbers (Important)

Here’s the methodological honesty: Montréal’s count of 3 is directly observed from 2026 weather records at the Montréal-Trudeau airport station. The numbers for the other 259 cities are climate-norm estimates based on 30-year averages (1991-2020) for the same Jan 1 – May 5 window.

What this means in practice: a few of the cities in this list may have had a worse-than-normal early 2026 too (and would slip lower if observed directly), and a few may have had a better-than-normal one (and would rise). But the overall ranking is robust. Montréal at the bottom isn’t a quirk of model assumptions — it’s structural. The combination of cold winter, late spring, persistent precipitation, and generally cloudy shoulder seasons puts the city in this neighborhood every year.

For full transparency: Montréal’s own climate-norm estimate is roughly 6 good days. Its actual 2026 number was 3. Even by its own historical standards, this year has run below trend.

Why Montréal Specifically Ranks This Low

Three structural factors stack against Montréal in any Jan 1 – May 5 window:

1. The temperature ceiling lifts late

Most cities in the temperate band cross the 15°C threshold reliably by March or early April. Montréal typically doesn’t see consistent 15°C+ days until the last week of April. That alone disqualifies most of the 125-day window.

2. Spring arrives wet

When the temperature finally cooperates, it usually arrives attached to rain. April in Montréal averages 12-15 days of measurable precipitation. The warm air masses don’t show up dry — they show up with weather systems.

3. The cloud-cover penalty

Cities like Calgary, Phoenix, or Madrid are colder than you might think in winter, but they’re sunny while they’re cold. Montréal is both cold AND overcast for long stretches — January through March averages well over 60% cloud cover. Even the warm-enough days often fail the “sunny” test.

The Full 260-City Ranking

Below is the complete global table, sortable by rank. Montréal is highlighted. Scroll within the table to see all 260 entries.

Note: Montréal’s value (3) is directly observed from 2026 records. All other cities use 30-year climate-norm estimates for the same Jan 1 – May 5 window. The observed-rank position (#246) reflects where Montréal’s 2026 actual number falls in that ranking.

The Silver Lining

The good news embedded in this analysis is that Montréal’s poor early-year ranking is mostly a function of when we measured. From May 6 through September, the city historically delivers 90 to 110 truly good days — roughly the same total Honolulu produces in early Jan – May. If we ran this exact study from June 1 to October 5, Montréal would not be in the bottom 6%. It would be near the top of the temperate-climate tier.

In other words: the Montréal weather contract is real. Pay in winter, collect in summer.

Methodology, In Brief

For each city, we estimated the number of days in the 125-day window meeting all five criteria using the formula:

good_days ≈ N_warm × P(dry|warm) × P(sunny|warm,dry) × P(low_wind)

Where N_warm is the climate-norm count of days reaching 15°C in the window, and the conditional probabilities are estimated from each city’s published climate normals (precipitation days, sunshine fraction, wind statistics). The model accounts for the fact that warm days in temperate climates are correlated with dry, sunny conditions (high-pressure systems).

Montréal’s value is the only one in the dataset derived from directly observed 2026 weather observations rather than climate-norm estimation.