Colmar in the summer

Colmar isn’t nearby Paris….but the region is nice. As to heat, it gets warmer every year. ( I lived or vacationed in Europe since 2003) You can’t avoid summer in much of Europe. You could go to coastal areas of Normandy and be like the French and vacation for several days. Plus Normandy is an easy train trip.

Good Luck!

When I have doubts about the weather at a potential destination, I go to the website timeanddate.com and check the actual, historical, day-by-day weather statistics for the appropriate month over the most recent five years. I fell that gives me a good idea of the range of temperatures I may experience.

Colmar weather -- July 2024

Use the pull-down box at the right, just above the graph, to change the month and year displayed. Be sure to check multiple years, because weather can vary a lot.

Use the Search box at the upper right to find data for other locations.

Veteran Traveler is right: If you want to be nearly certain to avoid extreme heat, you'd do better to head to Normandy or Brittany--or somewhere at altitude in the mountains. It has become very difficult to avoid excessive heat during the European summer

Thank you both for the weather tips but the weather looks manageable to me based on the chart provided. Have either of you been to Colmar? I was more concerned about crowds in the summer and also wanted to get a sense of whether Colmar really is as magical as described or whether it is overrun with tourists, and thus far less desirable than it used to be.

I was down there in mid-June this year showing visiting family around. The weather was very nice. This past summer was really comfortable, we never turned the AC on at all. The year before we only had it on for a week. The extreme heat is more click bait than reality in Alsace-Lorraine, Saarland, or the Pfalz. I'll be in Colmar this weekend also. It's cool and rainy. No floods, etc.

As noted, Colmar is not close to Paris. You would be better off going to Reims or Metz, both of which are excellent places to spend a couple days.

People's heat tolerance varies a lot. I see there were five days in July 2024 when the temperature in Colmar hit 90F or higher. One day it was 97F. To me that is plenty hot enough to be unpleasant. It appears temperatures dropped a lot overnight, but of course it's not always practical to sleep with open windows in Europe due to the usual absence of screens--either insects or noise, or both, could be an issue.

I visited Colmar during the summer of 2015, staying there for a few nights. I don't recall weather problems at that time. Colmar is really gorgeous, but it is also very popular. You should expect to see a lot of other visitors in the center of the historic area. I walked around a lot and found areas that didn't feel especially touristy, but Colmar is a gem, not an undiscovered gem. I'd be happy to go back because it is so beautiful, but there have definitely been comments here about how touristy it is. One of Colmar's advantages is that it is sort of the transportation hub for the area, so it is possible to visit some of the little wine towns by train or (probably more often) bus; just don't try to see a bunch of them on the same day, because the schedules just will not support that. I went to the larger town of Selestat by train and found it handsome and nearly bereft of obvious tourists, but it's not the cute little village many people want to see. Selestat photos -- source: Google

I've also been to Reims and would never recommend it as a substitute for Colmar. It has a beautiful cathedral, and some people like to visit the champagne houses, but the city overall is simply not one of France's most attractive. It's not a place I'd enjoy hanging out for multiple days. I'd choose Troyes instead if I wanted a place with fewer international tourists than Colmar; the French themselves know all about Troyes, so there will definitely be other tourists there. Troyes is about 1-1/2 hours from Paris by regional train. Troyes photos -- source: Google

In the summer I did not find any days of extreme heat in Lorraine. No need for AC which I don't use anyway.

I was in Metz for a week towards the end of May and again at the end of July, arriving there at 6 AM on 26 July, the day the Olympics began, for 5 more nights. Weather was always pleasant by noon.

Re: "Somewhere near Paris to visit on a layover" Towns in northern France? How about Amiens on the Somme?

Thank you all. You have all been hugely helpful