How to read a climate table

A monthly climate table looks simple, but each column answers a different question and an average can hide a great deal. This guide walks through the rows and columns on this site, so you can read the line for your travel month without being misled.

What a climate table is, and is not

The monthly table on each destination page is a summary of what the weather has typically done at that place over roughly the past twenty years, broken down month by month. Each row is a calendar month and each column is one weather measurement averaged across about two decades of daily records. It is a description of the climate, the long-run pattern, rather than a forecast of what any single future month will actually deliver, and that distinction matters more than any individual number in the grid.

Read this way, the table is a planning instrument rather than a promise. It is reliable when you are still deciding where to go and roughly when, months ahead of departure, because no real forecast exists that far out and a stable average is the best guide available. It is not a substitute for a normal short-range forecast in the final week before you travel, when you should check the actual conditions and adjust your packing. Keeping that purpose in mind stops you reading more certainty into the figures than they can carry.

Temperature: the mean is not the day

The temperature column on this site is a monthly mean: the average of the daily temperatures across every day of that month over the period. A mean of nineteen degrees does not mean the afternoon high is nineteen. It sits between the cool of the night and the warmth of the afternoon, so the daytime peak is usually several degrees above it and the small hours several degrees below. If you only ever look at the mean, you will tend to underestimate how warm the middle of the day feels and overestimate how mild the evening will be.

This is why a single figure can mislead two travellers in opposite directions. Someone planning beach days cares about the afternoon, which runs above the mean; someone walking at dawn or eating outside late cares about the part of the day that runs below it. The destination guides describe these swings in plain language, noting where days climb into the high twenties while nights stay cool, and reading the guide alongside the table fills in the spread that a mean alone cannot show. Treat the mean as the centre of a range, not the temperature you will stand in.

Rain days are not total rainfall

The rain column counts wet days, expressed on this site as rain days per week, rather than how much water falls. Those are different questions and they can disagree sharply. A month with a handful of brief afternoon showers and a month with one slow day of steady downpour can record a similar number of rain days while delivering very different total rainfall, and a low rain-day count tells you the rain is infrequent without telling you whether, when it comes, it is a passing shower or a washout.

For most holiday planning the frequency of wet days is the more useful measure, because what usually spoils a trip is losing whole days rather than the depth of the puddles. Even so, you should not silently convert a rain-day figure into a rainfall total in your head, because the table does not contain that and the relationship is not fixed across destinations or seasons. Our companion guide on rain days versus total rainfall works through why the two diverge and which one to lean on for which kind of trip.

Sunshine and wind: useful, with caveats

The sunshine column on this site is given as hours of sun per day, averaged across the month. It is a good proxy for how bright a typical day feels and pairs naturally with the rain column: high sun with few rain days is the stable, reliable pattern most beach travellers want, while lower sun hours flag the duller, more changeable months even when the rain count looks modest. Remember it is a daily average, so individual days will be both brighter and greyer than the figure suggests, and shorter winter days cap the hours available regardless of cloud.

The wind column is an average wind speed for the month and is the one to read with the most care, because its effect depends heavily on local geography that a single number cannot convey. The same average can mean a pleasant cooling breeze on an exposed coast or a tiresome afternoon blow that churns up the sea, and seasonal winds can make one shore choppy while the opposite side stays calm. Use the wind figure to spot the consistently breezier months, then read the destination guide for how that wind actually behaves on the ground.

Reading the row for your travel month

Start with the row for the month you can actually travel, not the destination's best month, and read all four columns together rather than fixing on one. A warm mean with few rain days and good sun hours is the reassuring combination; a warm mean undercut by a high rain-day count or low sun is the month that looks better in a brochure than in practice. Then glance at the rows on either side, because the months before and after show you which way conditions are trending and whether shifting your dates by a week or two would help.

Finally, treat every cell as a long-run average with real variation around it, and let the destination guide and the tools fill in what the grid omits. The year calendar breaks the same data into 52 weeks, which is finer than a monthly row and shows exactly where within a month conditions tend to turn, and the destination check scores your specific dates against the conditions you care about. The table is the quick overview that points you at the right month; the calendar and the check are where you confirm the detail before you commit money to the trip.

Key takeaways

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