Vermont, New Hampshire and coastal Maine — the autumn colour is the whole point, and it is brief. Northern new england has a strongly continental year. Highs swing roughly 26 °C between January (-2 °C) and July (24 °C), so the month you pick changes the trip entirely.
Measured against a city trip, the conditions hold up July to September. August is the most consistent single month: highs near 23 °C, nights around 16 °C, and roughly 97 mm of rain across the month.
What rules months out here is temperature and rainfall, not any composite judgement. January is the weakest month on these criteria.
October sits just outside the window, with part of the month working and part not. These are usually the interesting weeks: conditions are close to the peak-season answer while prices and crowds are not. The map lets you check them fortnight by fortnight rather than trusting a monthly average.
What northern New England is known for
- Autumn colour typically peaks from late September in the north to mid-October further south
- The Kancamagus Highway and Vermont's Route 100 are the classic leaf-peeping drives
- Acadia National Park's Cadillac Mountain is among the first places in the US to see sunrise
- The White Mountains have some of the world's worst recorded weather at Mount Washington's summit
Month by month
| Month | High °C | Low °C | Precip mm | Wet days |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| January | -2 | -11 | 91 | 12.9 |
| February | -1 | -10 | 83 | 11.2 |
| March | 3 | -6 | 98 | 13.0 |
| April | 10 | 1 | 101 | 12.9 |
| May | 16 | 7 | 113 | 13.4 |
| June | 21 | 13 | 115 | 13.8 |
| July | 24 | 16 | 110 | 13.7 |
| August | 23 | 16 | 97 | 12.2 |
| September | 20 | 12 | 97 | 10.1 |
| October | 13 | 6 | 115 | 12.7 |
| November | 6 | 0 | 116 | 13.1 |
| December | 1 | -6 | 109 | 14.1 |
Ticked rows are months where every hard requirement for a city trip is met across at least half the month.
Open New England on the map →
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Nearby regions
Figures are 30-year climatology sampled at Burlington, Stowe, North Conway, Bar Harbor and Montpelier, averaged across those locations, from ERA5-Land reanalysis fitted with a harmonic seasonal cycle and a trend term, evaluated for 2026. Sampling named towns rather than averaging the whole region avoids blending valley and mountain conditions into a figure true of neither. Cells are about 0.08° wide, from ERA5-Land's 0.1° grid, which is itself driven by a 0.25° (~28 km) atmospheric reanalysis — so individual valleys, sheltered bays and single summits are not resolved. In steep terrain read these as conditions for the wider area rather than for one village. They describe typical conditions, not a forecast. Read how the climatology is built.