ORLANDO · BEST TIME TO VISIT · 28.4° N
Orlando does not have a winter so much as a dry half of the year. In an average November the airport gauge collects 1.79 inches of rain across three wet days. In an average June it collects 8.05 inches across 11.5. Same city, same parking lots, two entirely different vacations.
Everything travelers argue about afterward, school breaks, line-skipping passes, whether to buy the poncho at the gate, sits on top of that split. Choose the month well and the afternoon belongs to you. Choose badly and you spend it under a covered walkway while lightning closes the outdoor rides.
ORLANDO AT A GLANCE · BEST TIME TO VISIT
November is Orlando’s best month: 78.3°F days, 1.79 inches of rain and the fewest wet days of the year, with the Atlantic hurricane season closing on the 30th.
BEST: NOVEMBER · WETTEST: JUNE, 8.05 IN · HOTTEST: JULY, 92.0°F · NORMALS 1991–2020, AIRPORT STATION
Go for: November and early December, when days average 78.3°F and 73.8°F and rain falls on three or four days in the month.
Think twice before: booking nonrefundable in September, the statistical peak of the Atlantic hurricane season (September 10).
Normals: NOAA NCEI 1991–2020, station USW00012815 · Hurricanes: NOAA NHC · Lodging tax: Florida DOR · full sources at the end
On this page
- Month-by-month highs, lows and rainfallThe twelve-month table
- The single best month to visit OrlandoNovember, with the numbers
- How hot Orlando gets in July and August92.0°F days, 73.7°F nights
- The quietest weeks in the Orlando calendarMid-January and September
- The month to avoid in OrlandoSeptember and the hurricane peak
- May or October for the shoulder seasonThe gap in degrees and rain days
Two numbers frame the whole Orlando year: 1.79 inches of rain in an average November against 8.05 in an average June, both from the same airport gauge.
Orlando weather month by month: highs, lows and rainfall
| Month | Avg high | Avg low | Rain | Days ≥ 0.10 in |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| January | 71.8°F | 49.5°F | 2.48 in | 4.0 |
| February | 74.9°F | 52.4°F | 2.04 in | 3.8 |
| March | 78.9°F | 55.8°F | 3.03 in | 4.0 |
| April | 83.6°F | 60.7°F | 2.58 in | 3.9 |
| May | 88.4°F | 66.3°F | 4.02 in | 5.7 |
| June | 90.8°F | 71.6°F | 8.05 in | 11.5 |
| July | 92.0°F | 73.2°F | 7.46 in | 11.5 |
| August | 91.6°F | 73.7°F | 7.69 in | 11.5 |
| September | 89.6°F | 72.4°F | 6.37 in | 9.2 |
| October | 84.7°F | 66.2°F | 3.46 in | 5.3 |
| November | 78.3°F | 58.2°F | 1.79 in | 3.0 |
| December | 73.8°F | 52.9°F | 2.48 in | 3.7 |
Orlando’s year has two seasons, not four. From November through April, highs run between 71.8°F and 83.6°F and rain falls on three to four days a month. From May onward the water arrives in a block: 4.02 inches, then 8.05, 7.46, 7.69 and 6.37 through September. The temperature curve is gentle. The rainfall curve is a cliff.
Two months do the flipping. May adds 4.8°F to April’s 83.6°F high and 1.44 inches to its rain, lifting nights from 60.7°F to 66.3°F. June then doubles May outright: 8.05 inches against 4.02, and 11.5 wet days against 5.7. Coming back down, October is the release valve, with 3.46 inches against September’s 6.37 and highs 4.9°F lower.
August is the hardest month in the set, and it is hardest for a specific traveler: the one whose day is spent standing outdoors. Days average 91.6°F, nights hold at 73.7°F (the warmest of the twelve), and 7.69 inches fall across 11.5 wet days, 2.3 of which drop an inch or more. If your plan runs on indoor rides, a pool and a late dinner, August costs you far less.
Every figure here comes from one instrument: NOAA’s 1991-2020 normals for station USW00012815, at Orlando International Airport. That is not the parks, not downtown, not your resort’s parking lot, and central Florida storms are famously local. A wet day in the last column means at least 0.10 inch of rain, the American threshold, not a passing sprinkle. A normal is a thirty-year average, never a forecast.
When is the best time to visit Orlando?
November, and specifically its first three weeks. Days average 78.3°F, nights 58.2°F, and the month collects 1.79 inches of rain over three wet days, the driest total and the fewest wet days of the year. The Atlantic hurricane season ends on the 30th. The heat that turns a July queue into an ordeal has drained out of the afternoon.
Its neighbors both lose the comparison. December runs 4.5°F cooler by day, 73.8°F against 78.3°F, with 2.48 inches over 3.7 days and the holiday crowd walking in behind it. October is warmer at 84.7°F, but carries 3.46 inches over 5.3 wet days, nearly double November’s rainfall, and sits inside the stretch from mid-August to mid-October when Atlantic activity concentrates.
For how November fits a wider trip, the same dry-season logic runs from the Keys to the Panhandle in our Florida timing guide, and the family version lives in Florida with kids. Budget the room rate with tax included: Orange County levies a 6.0% transient rental tax on top of the 6% state sales tax, a line what a Florida trip costs walks through.
How hot does Orlando get in summer?
July is the peak at 92.0°F, August close behind at 91.6°F, June at 90.8°F. The number that matters more is the one underneath: average lows of 71.6°F, 73.2°F and 73.7°F across those three months. Nights never really release the heat, so the pavement you cross at 9 a.m. starts the day warm. Add 11.5 wet days in each of the three, and the storm becomes part of the schedule.
What the normals do not carry is humidity. The station records air temperature and rainfall, not dew point and not heat index, so we will not attach a number to how a 92.0°F afternoon feels when the air is saturated, because we do not have one. Anyone who has walked a park in July knows the gap between the reading and the experience is wide. Plan around the reading and assume the experience is worse.
When is Orlando quietest?
Quiet in Orlando is a calendar fact, not a price chart. The slow stretches land when American schools are in session and no federal holiday is close: the weeks between New Year and Presidents’ Day, most of September and the first half of October, and the early December days before the holiday machine starts turning. We hold no price series for the city, so there is no cheapest month crowned anywhere here.
The gain is daylight spent moving rather than waiting. January averages 4.0 wet days and highs of 71.8°F, which is walking weather with a fleece in the bag, and the mid-January sun is up from 7:17 a.m. to 5:51 p.m. September’s quiet is the warm version: 89.6°F afternoons, a 7:31 p.m. sunset on the 15th, and evenings you can still spend outdoors.
The loss is measurable too. January nights fall to 49.5°F on average, and 1.1 nights in a typical January reach 32°F or below, which matters if half your trip is a water park. Daylight on January 15 runs 10 hours 34 minutes, barely more than mid-December’s 10 hours 23. September buys its short lines with 6.37 inches of rain over 9.2 wet days.
Which month should you avoid in Orlando?
September, and for one type of traveler above all: the one booking nonrefundable with a fixed single week. The Atlantic season peaks on September 10, the month still delivers 89.6°F days and 72.4°F nights, and 6.37 inches of rain arrive across 9.2 wet days. A storm does not need to make landfall on Orlando to erase two days of a seven-day trip through airline cancellations alone.
Set against that, September is the quietest warm month of the year. It runs 2.0°F cooler by day than August, drops 2.3 fewer wet days, and still offers 12 hours 21 minutes of daylight on the 15th. Book it flexible, watch the tropics, and it rewards you with the shortest lines any 89-degree month will ever produce. Commit to it nonrefundable and you are gambling with the calendar’s worst odds.
Is the shoulder season worth it in Orlando?
The two shoulder months are May and October, and each sits one step off a summer month. May runs 2.4°F cooler by day than June, 5.3°F cooler by night, and takes exactly half of June’s rain: 4.02 inches against 8.05, 5.7 wet days against 11.5. October is 7.3°F cooler than July and drops from 7.46 inches to 3.46, from 11.5 wet days to 5.3.
What that buys is the long evening without the daily storm. On May 15 the sun rises at 6:33 a.m. and sets at 8:10 p.m., 13 hours 38 minutes of usable day, and the rain shows up on fewer than six of the month’s thirty-one days. Summer offers the same light and triples the odds that the afternoon collapses into thunder.
The shoulder takes things back, and the figures are specific. October gives 11 hours 31 minutes of daylight, two hours and seven minutes less than May, with the sun down by 6:56 p.m. on the 15th. It also remains inside hurricane season, which does not close until November 30. May, for its part, already reaches 88.4°F in the afternoon, within 2.4°F of June.
So: take October if heat is the deal breaker, since 84.7°F days and 5.3 wet days beat May on both counts. Take May if long evenings matter more than a cooler afternoon. Either one beats June, July and August by roughly six wet days a month, which is the single biggest swing available to anyone who cannot travel in November.
The last word
Book November if the school calendar lets you, and October or May if it does not. One detail nobody plans for: on November 15 the sun is gone by 5:33 p.m., so the last three hours of a park day happen under lights, with the crowd already thinning and the temperature sitting near 58°F. Bring a layer for the walk back to the car.
Sources & data for this guide
- Monthly temperature and precipitation normals, 1991-2020, station USW00012815 (Orlando International Airport) · NOAA NCEI · checked Sep 11, 2026
- Wet-day counts (0.10 inch and 1.00 inch thresholds) and nights at or below 32°F · NOAA NCEI, same station and period · checked Sep 11, 2026
- Daylight length, sunrise and sunset on the 15th of each month, converted to America/New_York · sunrise-sunset.org · checked Sep 11, 2026
- Atlantic hurricane season dates and September 10 climatological peak · NOAA National Hurricane Center · checked Sep 11, 2026
- Orange County 6.0% transient rental tax and 6% state sales tax · Florida Department of Revenue, form DR-15TDT · checked Sep 11, 2026
- Crowd timing here is editorial and follows the American school and holiday calendar. We hold no price or occupancy series for Orlando, so no month is ranked by cost on this guide.