ERICEIRA · PORTUGAL · MAY
May hands Ericeira the part of the Portuguese spring nobody argues with: average highs of 73.0°F, nights at 57.4°F, and 5.7 days in the month that record measurable rain. The whitewashed streets above the reefs are awake, the clifftop path is walkable at two in the afternoon without seeking shade, and on May 15 the light holds until 8:43 p.m.
What the month takes away is the dry certainty of high summer. June runs 6.0°F warmer by day and drops to 0.53 inches of rain, roughly a quarter of May’s 2.00. Choosing between the two is the whole question for anyone already set on this coast, and the answer moves depending on whether you came to surf, to walk the cliffs, or to sit still on a beach.
THE MONTH AT A GLANCE · ERICEIRA · MAY
May warms past 73.0°F by day while the rain keeps easing off April’s 7.7 wet days: take it for long light and mild walking, and skip it if you need reliably dry afternoons, since June averages 0.53 inches.
HIGH 73.0°F · LOW 57.4°F · 2.00 IN OF RAIN · 5.7 WET DAYS · 14H 21M OF DAYLIGHT ON MAY 15
Go for: long light on the clifftop path, 73.0°F afternoons that never ask for shade, and two fewer wet days than April.
Think twice before: banking on dry afternoons. In an average May, 1.9 days deliver 0.39 inch or more, and 57.4°F nights end the seafront sitting early.
Normals: IPMA station 579, 1991-2020 · Daylight: sunrise-sunset.org · full sources at the end
On this page
- Ericeira weather in MayHighs of 73.0°F, 2.00 inches, 5.7 wet days
- How warm does it get, and how cold is the ocean?The 15.6-degree day-night gap, and the water question
- Crowds, room prices and the tourist taxWhat we can say, and what we could not verify
- Things to do in Ericeira in MayRibeira d’Ilhas, Foz do Lizandro, Mafra
- A two-day plan for the townHour by hour, with a wet-day swap
- May, April or June?How the three months compare, degree by degree
- Is May a good time to visit Ericeira?Who should come, and who should shift
The town itself, where to sleep and how to arrive from the capital sit in the Ericeira guide, and the twelve-month view of the country is in our best-time guide. Here the question is narrower. What does the date of May do to a week on this stretch of coast, and would four weeks in either direction serve you better?
Ericeira weather in May: average highs, lows and rain days
| Ericeira in May | 1991-2020 normal |
|---|---|
| Average high | 73.0°F (22.8°C) |
| Average low | 57.4°F (14.1°C) |
| Day-night gap | 15.6°F |
| Precipitation | 2.00 in (51 mm) |
| Days with 0.04 in or more | 5.7 |
| Days with 0.39 in or more | 1.9 |
| Daylight, May 15 | 14h 21m |
| Sunrise / sunset, May 15 | 6:22 a.m. / 8:43 p.m. |
The normals below come from IPMA, the Portuguese national weather service, and from a real thermometer rather than a model grid cell: station 579, Lisboa Gago Coutinho, at 103.9 m, over 1991-2020. That instrument stands inland at Lisbon’s airport, not on an exposed surf coast, so read 73.0°F by day and 57.4°F at night as the regional spring instead of a beachfront reading. Go up into the high ground behind the coast and it turns colder and a good deal wetter.
Rain reaches the gauge on 5.7 days of an average May, about one day in five, and 1.9 of those deliver 0.39 inch or more. Those are IPMA’s own thresholds, counted from 1 mm and 10 mm, not the 0.10-inch line American tables use, so the two counts are not interchangeable. Spread across the month, 2.00 inches works out as a couple of genuine soakings, a handful of grey mornings that burn off, and roughly 25 days with nothing measurable at all.
Between the 73.0°F afternoon and the 57.4°F night lie 15.6 degrees, and that gap arrives every day on a coast where onshore wind does half the cooling for free. Two climates go in one bag: short sleeves for the middle of the day, a real windbreaker and long pants for anything after eight in the evening. Our packing guide has the full list. The May-specific addition is a layer you can pull on outdoors without walking back to the room.
On May 15 the sun rises at 6:22 a.m. local time and sets at 8:43 p.m., giving 14 hours 21 minutes of daylight. That is the figure that separates this month from the shoulder seasons: dinner starts in daylight, and the walk back along the seafront still has color in it at nine. An early sunrise also means a full session in the water before breakfast, with the wind at its lightest.
How warm is Ericeira in May, and how cold is the water?
The daily high averages 73.0°F and the overnight low 57.4°F, 15.6 degrees apart, and both land close to halfway between April (67.8°F and 53.2°F) and June (79.0°F and 61.7°F). A 73-degree afternoon with steady wind off the Atlantic reads cooler on the skin than the same number does thirty minutes inland, and the cliffs above the beaches get the wind first.
In practice you dress twice. A fleece or a shell over a t-shirt at seven in the morning, the shell off by eleven, the shell back on the moment you stop moving in the breeze. Lunch outdoors works almost every dry day of the month. Sitting outdoors at ten at night, with the thermometer heading for 57.4°F and the wind still up, is for people who brought the jacket.
Freezing is not what a May list guards against: the average low sits 25 degrees above it, and we found no frost-day count in the station record we read. The ocean is the real unknown. We could not verify a monthly sea-temperature series for Ericeira, so we give no water figure. If you find one elsewhere, check whether it is an average of daily maxima, since that runs a little warmer than a 24-hour mean. Spring on this coast is wetsuit water either way.
How busy is Ericeira in May? Crowds, room prices and the tourist tax
May falls in the gap between the Easter traffic and the summer. That is a fact of the calendar, not a measurement: we found no occupancy series and no monthly room-rate series for Ericeira, so we crown no month cheap and no month expensive. The weather does explain the pressure that builds after it. June averages 2.0 wet days against May’s 5.7, and that contrast is why June is the month most people ask for first.
Book earlier for a weekend than for midweek. Ericeira is within an easy drive of the capital, and a dry Saturday in spring moves cars out of Lisbon toward the coast. We have no lead-time data to put a number of weeks on that, so treat the advice as judgment rather than measurement. For the money side of the trip, our cost guide does the arithmetic with figures behind it.
We could not verify a nightly tourist-tax rate for Ericeira, so we give no percentage and no per-person amount. Ask the property what municipal tax it collects, whether it is already inside the quoted rate, and whether children are exempt. Getting that answer in writing before you arrive is worth more than any estimate we could print here.
One upgrade genuinely changes May rather than decorating it, and that is a car. With 5.7 wet days on the average and an exposed shoreline, the difference between a lost afternoon and a good one is being able to drive to the palace at Mafra or south toward Sintra when the sky closes in. Our rental guide covers tolls and deposits. Buses and trains cover the rest of the country better than they cover a coastal detour.
Things to do in Ericeira in May: Ribeira d’Ilhas, Foz do Lizandro and Mafra
May is the month you can walk the whole coast on foot without paying for it in heat. A 73.0°F afternoon is walking temperature, and the clifftop paths between the beaches offer no shade at any point along them. Try the same route in June, when the average high reaches 79.0°F, and the middle of the day turns into a negotiation. April keeps the cool but hands you 7.7 wet days against May’s 5.7.
The town’s beaches run in a line below the streets: Praia dos Pescadores under the harbor ramp, Praia do Sul and Praia de São Sebastião to the south, Praia do Matadouro folded between cliffs. North of town, Ribeira d’Ilhas is the long reef with terraces stacked above it, and Coxos beyond it is the right-hander the surf world knows by name. South, Foz do Lizandro spreads wide and flat where the river meets the sand, the one that suits children. Inland stands the Palace of Mafra, with its basilica and its library.
What the month changes at these places is the air above them, not the water in front of them. Between April and June the average high climbs 11.2 degrees, while no monthly water figure we could verify exists for this stretch, so the wetsuit stays in the plan whichever of the three you pick. May’s real effect is on the hour after you come out: at 57.4°F overnight, the sitting around on the sand ends sooner than it would in August.
Free in May: every beach, the clifftop path, the terraces above Ribeira d’Ilhas where people watch the swell for hours, and the light until 8:43 p.m. that stretches all of it. We verified no event dates for Ericeira in May, so we name no festival and no contest. If a competition happens to be running while you are there, the terraces cost nothing anyway.
Ericeira in May: a two-day itinerary
Day one starts with a 6:22 a.m. sunrise, so the water is workable by seven and the wind is still soft. Breakfast in town around nine, then north to Ribeira d’Ilhas for the mid-morning session or for the terraces above it. Lunch back in the center. Keep two to four in the afternoon for something indoors or seated, since that is when 73.0°F peaks. Take the clifftop path from five, and be somewhere facing west by 8:43 p.m. Dinner afterward, jacket on.
Day two goes south to Foz do Lizandro for the flat sand and the river mouth in the morning, then inland to Mafra for the palace in the afternoon. If one of the month’s 1.9 heavy days lands on you, run it backward: the palace first, the beach in whatever gap the afternoon offers, since the 2.00 inches of a May rarely fall all day. A soaking morning on this coast is often a clear five o’clock.
Ericeira in May vs April and June
| Measure | April | May | June |
|---|---|---|---|
| Average high | 67.8°F | 73.0°F | 79.0°F |
| Average low | 53.2°F | 57.4°F | 61.7°F |
| Precipitation | 2.50 in | 2.00 in | 0.53 in |
| Days with 0.04 in or more | 7.7 | 5.7 | 2.0 |
Across the three months the daytime average climbs in even steps, 67.8°F to 73.0°F to 79.0°F, while the rain falls off a cliff at the end: 2.50 inches, then 2.00, then 0.53. May’s total is nearly four times June’s. Wet days follow the same path, 7.7 down to 5.7 and then to 2.0, so the jump between May and June is far bigger than the one between April and May. On water temperature we have no monthly figure for any of the three, so the comparison stops at the air.
Shift four weeks later and you gain 6.0 degrees by day, 4.3 at night, and 3.7 fewer wet days, and you give up the emptier beaches that come with a month people are less sure about. Shift four weeks earlier and April returns 5.2 degrees of coolness for two extra wet days and half an inch more rain. Our June page and April page run the same figures with their own months in the middle.
Is May a good time to visit Ericeira?
Yes for walkers, surfers and anyone who plans the day around light rather than heat. Fourteen hours of daylight, 73.0°F, and about 25 days in the month with nothing measurable falling is a good deal on an Atlantic coast. No if your trip depends on a run of dry afternoons in a row, or if you picture lying on sand until dark. The wind and the 57.4°F night have other ideas.
If that second description is yours, take June: 0.53 inches of rain, 2.0 wet days and 79.0°F by day is a different holiday, and the only thing it costs is the calm of a month before the summer. Readers who want cool over dry, and do not mind a jacket, will find April at 67.8°F does the walking just as well for 2.50 inches of rain.
No other month pairs 14 hours 21 minutes of daylight with fewer than six wet days and an afternoon that stays under 75 degrees.
The last word
Decide the surf-versus-sun question first and the month falls out of it. One small thing to take away: May’s overnight average of 57.4°F sits within a tenth of a degree of the exact midpoint between April’s 53.2°F and June’s 61.7°F, which is a neat way of saying the coast is halfway through its spring when you arrive. Pack for both ends of that, book the room before you book the car, and keep one afternoon loose for the palace at Mafra.
Sources & data for this guide
- May normals, highs, lows, precipitation and wet-day counts · IPMA, Normais Climatológicas 1991-2020, station 579 Lisboa Gago Coutinho, 103.9 m · checked Sep 23, 2026
- April and June normals used in the comparison · same IPMA 1991-2020 station series · checked Sep 23, 2026
- Wet-day thresholds of 1 mm (0.04 in) and 10 mm (0.39 in) are IPMA’s, not the 0.10-inch threshold used by US tables · checked Sep 23, 2026
- Sunrise 05:22 UTC and sunset 19:43 UTC on May 15, converted to local time · sunrise-sunset.org · checked Sep 23, 2026
- Station caveat: the thermometer is inland at Lisbon’s airport, while Ericeira is an exposed surf coast; high ground inland is colder and wetter
- Sea temperature: we found no monthly series we could verify for Ericeira, so we give no water figure
- Occupancy, room rates and municipal tourist tax: we could not verify any of the three, so we give no percentage and no price ranking
- Event dates: we verified none for May, so we name none. Beach and landmark descriptions are editorial; hours and ticketing change, so check operators when you book