Winter Weather in South West Europe

Personally I would never take a trip like that without water proof shoes and jacket.

Really? Fairly rainy hey?

I haven't traveled in winter so can't help with personal experience but it seems like you want data? Here is a webpage with weather averages - I have Barcelona in for now but you can look up the other places on your list

http://www.holiday-weather.com/barcelona/averages/

In Barcelona you are looking at average highs of 14, lows of 5 (Celsius) with average 5 days a month of rain. I would be OK with that but would be sure to have a rain jacket and shoes that are ok in rain.

Some other places on your list seem "worse" as far as wet, unpleasant weather - northern and inland places are likely to be colder and wetter in winter. What do you want to do in these places? If you want to go to museums and indoor restaurants/bars in cities, you should be fine, but if you want to spend lots of time outdoors, hiking etc then I'd maybe think twice about the colder places on your list.

The weather will vary considerably between all of these places. The further north and east, the colder it will be. In Paris, Vienna, and Budapest, consider yourself lucky if it's only rain. Especially the last 2 places, it could just as well be snow. You'll need to pack lots of layers and waterproof outerwear and shoes/boots. And gloves and scarves.

I prefer thus sight to look at long range weather: https://www.wunderground.com/history/airport/LOWW/2017/1/29/MonthlyCalendar.html?req_city=&req_state=&req_statename=&reqdb.zip=&reqdb.magic=&reqdb.wmo=

It will show this year's actual weather for the month as well as the historical averages.

I find wunderground's historical temperature graphs very illuminating. You don't need to depend on a single average high temp and average low temp or anecdotal reports from folks who may have visited your proposed destinations one time for five days. Look at those graphs for your travel months for a bunch of recent years. You can see how chilly it was at 8 AM and 5 PM, or any other time of the day.

As for precipitation, the weather chart on Wikipedia shows that Vienna gets an average of 6" to 7" (15.6 to 18.6 cm.) of snow per month in Jan-Feb.

" I'm planning my first ever trip overseas and would love to backpack around South West Europe over winter. I've planned it for six weeks over Jan-Feb and I'll hopefully get to explore Budapest, Vienna, then Italy (Venice, Rome, Florence), Spain (Barcelona, Madrid) and France (Nice, Paris)."

I'm not sure I would include Budapest and Vienna as southwest Europe. Could you please define what you mean by backpacking? Does that mean that you will be using a backpack to transport your belongings as you go from city to city by train and stay in hotels? Or will you be traveling some other way?

My only experience with winter travel in Europe is a 2 week period from late December-early January. Most of that time was in Paris. It was cold. Very cold. The warmest it ever got was 33 degrees F. I thought we were prepared for the cold. We were not. I am from California so am not used to cold weather. Even so, it was a bone chilling cold. We got some rain and some snow. Mostly it was just really cold.

try weatherspark.com

Thanks for all the advice and websites guys. I really appreciate it and they've been very helpful.
I was hoping to do a mixture of cultural sightseeing (museums and monuments) and outdoors hiking. Because of that I'll try and push the trip back a bit to April through to May to get a bit more sunshine and warmer temps.

Thanks again for the help!

Good idea, Will. I would also suggest that you start in the south and finish with the more northern cities, allowing them a chance to warm up.

I haven't traveled in January, but I've been to Italy and Spain in February, with more sunshine than rain and temps mostly in high teens. Andalucia is the warmest, driest part of Europe, so a very good place to start - Sevilla, Cordoba, Granada, then Madrid and Barcelona (which has a mild climate year-round). The last week in March is Semana Santa - huge in Andalucia, which means very high season prices and lots of crowds - but a great time to see the celebrations. Spring is a popular time for festivals in Spain, so April and May can be expensive and crowded when something is on, so plan well.

Paris is great no matter what the weather. Vienna and Budapest I think I would enjoy a lot more in warm sunshine that in chilly overcast days. Spring comes much later in these more northern climes and can be pretty wet.

This website is a good resource for weather data. Follow the "weather" link, then "past weather" to see actual day-by-day data for the past several years. That will give you a picture of what you may encounter.

I'd say you're virtually guaranteed to experience rain and more than likely to get snow on your trip. I've driven through a snow storm in southern Spain in April and I know they get snow, at least on occasion, all over southern France in the winter.

I agree with shoes that can take water and a good water-proof rain shell. I'd also pack at least a light ski cap and light-weight (easily packable) gloves. You can always buy a scarf when you're there. Other than that pack some things that can be layered. For me right now, it's a good warm sweater (hopefully not too bulky) and a packable down vest. If worse comes to worse, I can exist in freezing weather comfortably with my ski cap, sweater, vest, rain shell and regular clothes underneath. Other than that, fast drying clothes are a plus (non-cotton) both for laundry time and if you get caught outside in a deluge.