Vancouver Today: Live Weather, Sunset Time & What's On

Last updated: 2026-07-13 · Facts checked against official sources where linked · Editorial policy

Published 2026-07-13 · Alex

Live snapshot of Vancouver right now — weather, today's sunset, and what's on. Data loads fresh every time you open this page.

⚡ Quick answers for today

• Raining? Live answer above, or Is it raining in Vancouver? — full itineraries in our rainy-day explore guide.
• Beach or mountains? Above 20°C and sunny — English Bay or Kits Beach. Cloudy — Grouse or Seymour are often above the cloud layer; check their webcams.
• Best sunset spot tonight: Third Beach (Stanley Park), English Bay logs, or Spanish Banks at low tide.

📊 What a normal day looks like here, month by month

The live panel above tells you what today is doing. This table tells you whether today is normal. Figures are the Vancouver International Airport climate normals, rounded, plus the sunset time around the middle of each month — the number that actually decides how long an evening you have.

Two things surprise visitors. First, the rain is concentrated: November alone gets more than four times as much as July, and summer here is genuinely dry. Second, the daylight swing is extreme for a city this far south of the Arctic — sunset moves five hours between December and June, so a January afternoon ends while an August evening is still going at half past eight.

🧭 How to read today's numbers

• Above 20°C and clear. Beach day. English Bay and Kitsilano fill first; Spanish Banks and Jericho stay walkable, and at low tide the sand at Spanish Banks runs out for hundreds of metres.
• 12-18°C and dry. The best cycling and seawall weather there is. Rent at Denman and Georgia, ride the Stanley Park loop anti-clockwise — it's one-way — and carry on to False Creek if the legs allow.
• Overcast at sea level, October to March. Check a mountain webcam before you give up on the day. Grouse, Cypress and Seymour sit at 1,000-1,200 m and are regularly above the cloud layer while downtown is grey.
• Rain with wind. The wind is the part that matters. Steady rain is fine with a hood; rain at 40 km/h off the water turns umbrellas inside out and makes the seawall unpleasant. That's the day for Granville Island, the aquarium or a brewery afternoon.
• Freezing overnight, clear by day, December to February. The clearest views of the year. The North Shore mountains look close enough to touch from Kits Beach, and the Vancouver Lookout is worth the ticket only on days like this.
• Smoke haze in late July or August. Interior wildfire smoke can drift over for a few days at a time. Check the air quality reading before a long run or a hike — our BC wildfire and smoke page tracks it.

☔ Rain here is not the rain you're expecting

Vancouver gets about 1,200 mm a year, which sounds alarming until you see how it arrives: mostly as drizzle and light rain between October and March, at temperatures that rarely fall below freezing. Thunderstorms are rare. Snow at sea level lasts days, not months. Locals own hooded shells, not umbrellas, and the city keeps functioning outdoors all winter — the seawall is busy in February.

The practical consequence for a visitor: never write off a wet day. Rain here usually comes in bands, gaps of an hour or two are normal, and the forecast probability is telling you the chance of any rain at all, not that it will rain all day.

📅 What's on, by day of the week

• Monday — several museums and galleries close outside the summer season; check before crossing a bridge for one. Restaurants are quieter and easier to walk into.
• Tuesday — the Vancouver Art Gallery has long run by-donation admission on Tuesday evenings; worth confirming on their hours page before you go.
• Wednesday-Thursday — the cheapest nights for hotels and the easiest for restaurant tables. Summer brings free outdoor concerts and night markets midweek.
• Friday-Saturday — Granville Island is at its busiest by late morning, and parking there is a lost cause after 11am; take the False Creek ferry instead.
• Saturday — farmers market day. Trout Lake and Riley Park run the biggest ones in season; the winter market moves indoors.
• Sunday — Kitsilano's market in season, and the quietest morning of the week on the seawall. Some kitchens close early.

🌇 Tonight, specifically

Sunset direction matters as much as sunset time. The sun drops behind the water and Vancouver Island, so any west-facing shore works: Third Beach in Stanley Park for the quietest version, the English Bay logs for the social one, Kitsilano Beach for the skyline in the frame, Spanish Banks at low tide for the reflections. On the North Shore, Ambleside puts the city skyline against the sunset instead of beside it.

Allow forty minutes after the posted sunset before the light really goes — the long northern dusk is one of the better things about being at this latitude in summer.

Planning further ahead than tonight? The daily budget page covers what a day costs, and three days in Vancouver arranges the same places into an order that doesn't waste an afternoon on the bridge.

← Full Vancouver guide · Daily budget calculator