Best Time to Visit Madeira: Sea Temperature, Rain Days and the Quiet Months

MADEIRA · BEST TIME TO VISIT · 32.6° N

Madeira does not really have a winter. At the Funchal gauge the coldest month, February, still averages a high of 67.8°F, and the warmest, August, tops out at 80.2°F. Twelve and a half degrees separate the two ends of the year, which is less than many American cities move between breakfast and lunch. What actually swings across this calendar is water: rain on the slopes, and the temperature of the sea.

That leaves two decisions rather than twelve. Do you intend to get in the ocean, and are the levadas the reason for the trip? One month answers both, and a couple of months answer neither.

On this page

• Month-by-month table: highs, rain days, seaAll twelve months in one table
• The single best month to bookSeptember, with the figures
• When the sea is warm enough to swimSea temperature, July to November
• The quietest weeks on the calendarMid-January to Easter, and November
• The month with the most rain daysDecember, 8.6 wet days
• Hiking weather outside high summerJune, 1.0 wet day and 14 h 20 min of light
• Mainland Portugal’s calendar insteadThe 12-month verdict for Portugal

Every month below has its own page with the daily detail, so this stays at the level of the decision: which month, and why not the one next to it.

Madeira weather month by month: highs, lows, rain and sea

The year has one shape: temperature barely moves, and rain does all the work. Highs travel from 67.8°F in February to 80.2°F in August. Precipitation travels from 0.05 inches in August to 3.73 in December, more than seventy times as much.

The flips happen at the shoulders of summer, and they are abrupt. May takes 1.07 inches over 3.3 wet days, June takes 0.31 inches over 1.0. Autumn then undoes it in a single step: September’s 0.91 inches and 3.1 wet days become October’s 3.59 inches and 7.0. Nothing in the table slopes gently except the sea, which lags the air by about a month in both directions.

December is the hardest month, and it is hard for one kind of traveler. Its 8.6 days at 1 mm or more, 3.5 of them at 10 mm or more, and 10 hours 04 minutes of daylight on the 15th add up to several rewritten walking plans. For a visitor with a Funchal hotel, a pool and a dinner table, the same month reads as 69.8°F and a jacket after dark.

All the land figures above come from one instrument: IPMA station 522 at Funchal, 58 meters up, on the south coast, 1991 to 2020. It describes a coastal town, not an island of peaks. High ground runs colder and far wetter, and the north coast keeps its own weather entirely. Read the wet-day counts on the national service’s thresholds, 1 mm and 10 mm, rather than the 0.10-inch threshold used in most US tables. The two counts are not interchangeable.

When is the best time to visit Madeira?

September. Average high 79.9°F, average low 68.7°F, sea at 76.1°F, 0.91 inches of rain over 3.1 wet days, and 12 hours 24 minutes of daylight on the 15th. Warm enough for the water, cool enough that a four-hour walk is not an ordeal, and dry enough that most itineraries survive contact with the sky.

August beats it by 0.3°F in the air and 0.5°F in the water, and hands you the peak of the European school holidays in exchange. October keeps the sea nearly as warm at 75.6°F, then collects 3.59 inches across 7.0 wet days, 3.0 of them heavy. September sits between the two and takes almost nothing from either: under half of October’s wet days, and a sea within half a degree of the annual maximum.

The daily detail belongs to the month’s own page. Madeira in September has the sunrise times and the week-by-week drift, with August and October either side of it for anyone whose dates are set by a school calendar.

When can you swim in Madeira? Sea temperature month by month

Take 72°F as the line where an ordinary swimmer stops calling the water bracing (est.). Madeira clears it from July through November: 75.0°F, 76.6°F, 76.1°F, 75.6°F, then 73.0°F. June arrives close at 71.6°F. The other six months stay under, bottoming out at 66.9°F in March and 67.2°F in February. December is the surprise of the cold half, at 70.3°F it is warmer than May.

One caveat on those figures. Each is a mean of daily maxima over 2015 to 2024, so it describes the warmest reading of a typical day rather than a 24-hour average. Real water sits a shade below the number, and further below it at eight in the morning. That gap matters most in the borderline months, June and November, where one degree decides between a swim and a paddle.

When is Madeira quietest?

The quiet stretches are calendar facts, not price claims. The first runs from mid-January, once the New Year week in Funchal has cleared out, to the start of the Easter holidays. The second is November, sitting between the autumn trips and the Christmas build-up. No price series backs any of this, so read it as how many people are on the trail, not what a room costs.

February pays you back in daylight and in dry days. Highs of 67.8°F, 5.5 wet days at 1 mm, 2.1 of them heavy, and 11 hours 04 minutes of light on the 15th, a full 47 minutes more than January 15. March is drier still on totals at 2.45 inches, the lowest of the whole October-to-March half.

You lose the ocean and the mountains. March holds the sea at 66.9°F, its annual floor and 9.7°F under August. Daylight on March 15 runs 12 hours 01 minutes against June’s 14 hours 20 minutes, so a long walk finishes in the dark more easily than you plan for. And the coastal readings say nothing about the high ground, where a winter day can close a route that looked fine from a Funchal balcony.

Which month should you avoid in Madeira?

December, if the trip is built on levada days. The gauge collects 3.73 inches, the year’s highest, across 8.6 wet days, with 3.5 of them at 10 mm or more, and the 15th gives only 10 hours 04 minutes of light. Nothing there is dangerous at sea level. It is simply the highest chance in the year that the day you set aside for a long walk is the day it rains hard.

Two figures redeem it. December’s average high of 69.8°F is exactly April’s, so nobody is cold in Funchal. And the sea at 70.3°F beats every month from January through May, May’s 69.9°F included. Add a town spending the whole month on its New Year preparations and December becomes a fine city-and-restaurant week that happens to be a poor hiking one.

Is the shoulder season worth it in Madeira?

Call high summer July and August: 77.7°F and 80.2°F by day, 0.07 and 0.05 inches of rain, sea at 75.0°F and 76.6°F. The shoulders are May, June, September and October. June runs 5.5°F cooler than August by day and 5.0°F cooler in the water. May sits 8.6°F and 6.7°F below it.

June gives what high summer cannot: the year’s longest day at 14 hours 20 minutes on the 15th, twelve minutes more than July 15 and 57 minutes more than August 15, plus an average of 1.0 wet day at 1 mm and 0.2 at 10 mm. Climbing at 74.7°F instead of 80.2°F changes the character of a levada morning, and the extra light lets you start one after a slow breakfast.

It takes away the swimming. June’s sea at 71.6°F is 5.0°F under August and 4.5°F under September, which puts it just below the comfort line for most people. At the other shoulder, October holds 75.6°F of water but pays 3.59 inches of rain over 7.0 wet days, nearly four times September’s depth.

So the shoulder splits by purpose rather than by month. Walking trip: June, outright, on 1.0 wet day. Swimming trip: wait for September and its 76.1°F. May and October are the compromises, May dry and cool at 1.07 inches with 69.9°F water, October warm and unreliable at 3.59 inches. Both work if your plans can move by a day.

The last word

Two bookings cover almost everyone: September for the water, June for the trails. Beyond that, Madeira’s worst is mild. Even December averages fewer than nine days with 1 mm of rain, and one more figure is worth filing before you pick: January comes in drier than February on totals, 2.64 inches against 2.85, spread across more days. That is the island’s real habit at 58 meters on the south coast, wet mornings rather than washed-out weeks. Pack a shell, book the walk for the middle of the week, and keep a spare day.

Sources & data for this guide

• Monthly normals 1991-2020, highs, lows, precipitation, wet-day counts at 1 mm and 10 mm · IPMA (Instituto Português do Mar e da Atmosfera), station 522 Funchal, altitude 58.0 m · checked Sep 14, 2026
• Sea surface temperature, mean of daily maxima 2015-2024 · Open-Meteo Marine API · checked Sep 14, 2026
• Daylight, sunrise and sunset on the 15th of each month, converted to Atlantic/Madeira · sunrise-sunset.org · checked Sep 14, 2026
• Scope caveat: every land figure on this page comes from one coastal station. High ground and the north coast run colder and wetter · IPMA · checked Sep 14, 2026
• The 72°F swim comfort line is our own threshold (est.), not a measurement. Season and crowd notes are editorial calendar observations: no price series is used here and no month is claimed to be the cheapest.