Weather in Kingston in August

A good month. August is a solid month to be in Kingston. Highs average 24.4 °C, lows 18.6 °C, and rain falls on 14 days — nothing in the month is working against you.

August ranks 2 of 12 in Kingston. Only September scores clearly higher, and the difference is small enough to be settled by price rather than weather.

This is persistent light rain rather than storms: 14 wet days but only 2 heavy ones. It rarely cancels anything outright, and it rarely fully clears either. A jacket beats an umbrella. Nothing specialised needed — this is the month you pack for the trip rather than for the weather.

What the averages hide

Averages flatten a month, and this one hides a few things: it never really gets hot: not one day in an average August reaches 30 °C; the day barely swings — 5.8 °C between the overnight low and the afternoon high. Across the twenty years measured, the hottest August day reached 30.2 °C and the coldest night fell to 12.5 °C, and the wettest single day dropped 54 mm — roughly 68% of the month's rain in one day.

August is statistically steady but not small: the year-to-year variation is modest in relative terms, yet the wettest August on record still delivered 120 mm against 30 mm in the driest. In a month this wet, even a tame spread is a lot of rain in absolute terms — the 79 mm average is a reasonable planning figure, not a promise.

Wind is light at 7.3 km/h, so the temperature on the page is close to the temperature on your skin, and humidity runs at 76%, high enough to notice on the warm days without dominating them.

How August sits in the year

Temperatures hold steady either side: 24 °C in July, 24.4 here, 21.2 in September. Nothing about the timing within the month matters much.

Daylight in August

14.1 hours of daylight, losing 1.3 hours across the month. That is between Kingston's extremes of 15.5 and 8.9 hours, so days are long enough not to constrain the plan.

An inland climate

With no coast nearby, the year swings a fair way — 31.6 °C between the warmest afternoons and the coldest nights, wider than any coastal city at this latitude would manage.

How busy it gets

Peak season. Expect the highest prices of the year and to be booking well ahead.

Crowd levels are estimated from climate desirability and school-holiday calendars, not from visitor numbers.

August in Kingston versus nearby

If Kingston is one option among several, the nearby comparison is worth making. Ottawa is close enough to be a coin toss — within a degree on temperature, the same number of rain days. Peterborough is close enough to be a coin toss — 3.3 °C warmer, 3 days less rain.

So: August is effectively as good as it gets here — 1 points behind September, which is inside the margin where the weather stops being the deciding factor and price starts being it.

Every month in Kingston

See all twelve months in Kingston, or where else to go in August.