Weather in Sherbrooke in October

A hard month. October is a hard month in Sherbrooke, and worth planning around. Highs sit at 12.6 °C and the day is short; this is an indoors-with-excursions month, not an outdoors-all-day one.

October ranks 6 of 12 in Sherbrooke: past the worst of the year but short of September, which is the month to book if the dates are open.

Rain on 16 days, 3 of them heavy. Enough to need a plan B, not enough to need a plan around it. Layers, and a genuinely waterproof outer — at 12.6 °C the difference between a good day and a miserable one is entirely down to what you are wearing.

What the averages hide

Averages flatten a month, and this one hides a few things: 7 nights fall below freezing. Across the twenty years measured, the hottest October day reached 25.7 °C and the coldest night fell to -5.7 °C, and the wettest single day dropped 51 mm — roughly 43% of the month's rain in one day.

October is statistically steady but not small: the year-to-year variation is modest in relative terms, yet the wettest October on record still delivered 217 mm against 56 mm in the driest. In a month this wet, even a tame spread is a lot of rain in absolute terms — the 120 mm average is a reasonable planning figure, not a promise.

Wind is light at 0.3 km/h, so the temperature on the page is close to the temperature on your skin, and humidity runs at 85%, which at 12.6 °C means damp rather than muggy — the kind of cold that gets into a coat and stays there.

How October sits in the year

The month is on the way down: 7.8 °C cooler than September, with November dropping another 7.6 °C. The first week and the last are not the same trip.

Daylight in October

11 hours of daylight, losing 1.5 hours across the month. That is between Sherbrooke's extremes of 15.6 and 8.8 hours, so days are long enough not to constrain the plan.

An inland climate

With no coast nearby, the year swings a fair way — 39.7 °C between the warmest afternoons and the coldest nights, wider than any coastal city at this latitude would manage.

How busy it gets

Shoulder. The value months — prices ease off and you get the place closer to itself.

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

October in Sherbrooke versus nearby

If Sherbrooke is one option among several, the nearby comparison is worth making. Montréal is close enough to be a coin toss — within a degree on temperature, 2 days less rain. Québec is close enough to be a coin toss — within a degree on temperature, 1 day less rain.

So: October is a compromise. September is 26 points better and is what Sherbrooke is actually like at its best — worth moving the trip for if that is possible, and worth adjusting expectations for if it is not.

Every month in Sherbrooke

See all twelve months in Sherbrooke, or where else to go in October.