ERICEIRA · OCTOBER · THE DATED GUIDE
October in Ericeira runs a normal high of 72.7°F and a normal low of 58.8°F, with 4.05 inches of rain falling across roughly eight days. September was 7.5°F warmer in the afternoon and barely rained at all, 1.41 inches in the whole month. November pulls the afternoon down to 63.7°F. So October keeps the warm half of summer and hands back the dry sky, and the whole decision for an American trip sits in that trade.
Practically, this is a vacation built on two temperatures a day, a room you can cancel, and outdoor hours front-loaded before the 6:59 p.m. sunset of mid-October. Most trips fly into Lisbon and collect a rental car at the airport, because the rain days here are the days you drive to Mafra or Sintra instead of standing on sand. Our car guide covers the tolls and the packing list covers the jacket.
THE MONTH AT A GLANCE · ERICEIRA IN OCTOBER
October holds a 72.7°F afternoon and gives up the dry sky: 8.3 wet days, sunset before 7 p.m., and the last month above 70°F before November’s 63.7.
SHOULDER MONTH · HIGH 72.7°F · 8.3 WET DAYS · IPMA 1991-2020 NORMALS
Go for: shirt-sleeve afternoons at 72.7°F, late 7:45 a.m. sunrises that suit jet lag, and a coast you can still swim off with a wetsuit.
Think twice before: booking a beach-only week you cannot move, since 8.3 days record rain and 2.8 of them carry 0.39 inch or more.
Normals: IPMA station 579, 1991-2020 · Daylight: sunrise-sunset.org · full sources at the end
On this page
- Ericeira weather in OctoberHighs, lows, 8.3 wet days and the source behind them
- How warm it gets, day and night72.7°F by afternoon, 58.8°F before dawn
- Crowds, prices and when to bookWhere October sits, and what we could not verify
- Things to do in Ericeira in OctoberRibeira d’Ilhas, Praia do Sul, the harbor
- A two-day plan for OctoberTwo days paced to 11 hours 14 minutes of light
- October vs September and NovemberHow the three months compare, in one table
- Is October a good time to visit?Who should go, who should shift the dates
Two nights cover the town and its beaches. Four give you a wet afternoon to lose without resentment, plus a day in Sintra and a last night in Lisbon before the flight home. What a Portugal trip costs and how the trains and roads fit together live in our budget page and the getting-around guide. Every figure here is dated to October.
Ericeira weather in October: average highs, lows and rain days
| October in Ericeira | Normal, 1991-2020 |
|---|---|
| Average high | 72.7°F (22.6°C) |
| Average low | 58.8°F (14.9°C) |
| Precipitation | 4.05 in |
| Days with 0.04 in or more | 8.3 |
| Days with 0.39 in or more | 2.8 |
| Daylight on October 15 | 11 h 14 min |
The normals come from IPMA, the Portuguese national weather service, period 1991-2020, measured at station 579, Lisboa Gago Coutinho, a real thermometer at 103.9 meters rather than a model grid cell. The catch is where that thermometer stands: inland, at Lisbon’s airport. Ericeira is exposed Atlantic coast with its own wind, and high ground elsewhere in the region is colder and considerably wetter. Read 72.7°F and 58.8°F as the regional signal, not as a reading taken on the seafront.
Rain registers on 8.3 days in an average October, about one day in four, and 2.8 of those deliver 0.39 inch or more. Translated into a week on the coast, that is two mornings that start gray and clear by eleven, and one afternoon you spend indoors or in the car. Both counts use IPMA’s own thresholds, 1 mm and 10 mm, not the 0.10-inch line American tables draw, so the figures do not swap with a US chart.
Between dawn and mid-afternoon the thermometer moves 13.9°F, from 58.8 up to 72.7. That is a fleece at breakfast and a T-shirt at two o’clock, every single day, with a wind shell on top when the Atlantic gets involved. One warm layer, one waterproof, one pair of shoes allowed to get wet, and the rest of the suitcase is beach. Our packing guide goes further for the whole country.
On October 15 the sun rises at 7:45 a.m. and sets at 6:59 p.m. local time, giving 11 hours 14 minutes of daylight. The late sunrise is a gift to anyone arriving jet-lagged from the States, since the beach is still empty at eight and you have not had to fight for it. The cost lands at the other end of the day: dinner happens after dark, and a clifftop walk needs to start by five.
How warm is Ericeira in October, day and night?
The month’s two numbers are 72.7°F by afternoon and 58.8°F before dawn, a spread of 13.9°F. September works a wider swing, 80.2 down to 63.3, so October is both cooler and steadier. Nothing in the normals suggests a heat wave or a cold snap at sea level, and a fortnight here tends to hand you the same day fourteen times over, with rain as the only real variable.
Morning on the seafront means long sleeves and coffee. By one o’clock it is shorts and bare arms wherever there is shelter, though onshore wind is the reason a 72.7°F day reads cooler on an exposed headland than the same figure does in Lisbon. Evenings go back to the fleece: once the sun is down at 6:59 p.m. the air starts heading for that 58.8°F floor, and terrace dinners want a layer.
Frost is not a thing to plan around. The IPMA normals we read carry no frost-day count for this station, and with a monthly average low of 58.8°F, a freezing night at sea level in October would be remarkable. Whether your rental apartment has working heating matters far more than whether you packed a winter coat.
How busy is Ericeira in October? Crowds, prices and booking
October is the shoulder by the calendar rather than by any price list we can put in front of you. Summer is over, and rain nearly triples from September’s 1.41 inches to 4.05. We found no occupancy series and no monthly room-rate series for Ericeira, so we crown no month cheapest and quote no percentage drop. What a day in the country costs, tier by tier, sits in our Portugal budget page.
Without that data we are not going to tell you to book eleven weeks out. What the weather does justify is a refundable rate, because a forecast you can act on for this coast arrives days ahead, not months. Choose the lodging first and the car second, since the car is what turns a washed-out Tuesday into Mafra or Sintra. Where to stay in Portugal sets out the regional logic.
On the tourist tax we have nothing verified. We could not confirm whether a per-night lodging tax applies here in October, or at what rate, so no figure appears. Ask when you book: where such a tax does apply in Portugal, it usually turns up as a line on the final bill rather than inside the nightly rate.
The one upgrade that changes this particular month is mobility. A room five minutes from Praia do Sul is pleasant in any season, but 2.8 heavy-rain days are exactly what a rental car is for: the palace at Mafra, the coast road north toward Nazaré, a museum afternoon in Lisbon. Spend there before you spend on a sea view you will be looking at through a wet window.
Things to do in Ericeira in October
October is the last month on this coast with a normal high above 70°F. November’s 63.7 changes what an afternoon on sand feels like, and the gap between the two months is 9.0°F of afternoon warmth for almost identical rain. In practice that buys a beach day that still works as a beach day, followed by a dinner you eat with a jacket over the chair.
The beaches run in a line. Praia do Sul and Praia dos Pescadores sit below the old town, with the working fishing harbor at the foot of the cliff. Praia de São Sebastião is just north, then Ribeira d’Ilhas up the coast road, the best known of the town’s breaks, and Foz do Lizandro at the river mouth to the south. We could not verify opening hours, surf-school rates or any ticket price in town, so no figures stand next to those names.
What moves between September and October here is the air, by a measurable 7.5°F. The water is the number we could not verify: no October sea-surface reading for Ericeira came back solid enough to print, and the tables that do publish one generally average daily maxima, which reads a shade warmer than a 24-hour mean. Plan on a wetsuit and ask a local school what thickness they are handing out that week.
The free list stays long in October. The clifftop path between the beaches, the harbor when the boats come in, the tide pools at the southern end, and a 6:59 p.m. sunset that lands before dinner rather than during it. None of that has a season and none of it has a gate.
Ericeira in October: a two-day itinerary
Day one is timed to the light. Coffee at eight, fifteen minutes after sunrise, with the seafront to yourself. Beach or a surf lesson from ten to one, the warmest stretch of a 72.7°F day. Lunch at the harbor end, then the old town and the clifftop path through the afternoon. Be somewhere with a horizon by 6:30, because the sun is gone at 6:59 and the air starts down toward 58.8°F. Dinner happens after dark, as every dinner does this month.
Day two splits by the sky. Clear: drive north up the coast road past Ribeira d’Ilhas in the morning, Mafra in the afternoon. Wet, and 8.3 days a month say prepare for it: the same drive becomes Sintra’s palaces or a gallery day in Lisbon, both close enough to get you back for dinner in Ericeira. Since only 2.8 of those wet days carry 0.39 inch or more, most of them are showers rather than a washout, and a gray noon often opens up by four.
Ericeira in October vs September and November
| Normal, 1991-2020 | September | October | November |
|---|---|---|---|
| Average high | 80.2°F | 72.7°F | 63.7°F |
| Average low | 63.3°F | 58.8°F | 52.2°F |
| Precipitation | 1.41 in | 4.05 in | 4.51 in |
| Days with 0.04 in or more | 3.7 | 8.3 | 9.3 |
Set the three side by side and the shape is plain. September runs 80.2°F by day on 1.41 inches of rain across 3.7 wet days, the dry one. October drops the afternoon to 72.7°F and lifts rain to 4.05 inches across 8.3 days. November holds almost the same rain, 4.51 inches over 9.3 days, while the afternoon falls to 63.7°F.
Shift four weeks back to September and you gain 7.5°F in the afternoon and 4.6 fewer wet days. Shift four weeks forward to November and the rain barely moves, 0.46 inch more across one extra wet day, while the afternoon gives up 9.0°F. The trade runs one way only: September is the upgrade, November is colder weather for the same sky. Our September page lays out that month in full.
Is October a good time to visit Ericeira?
Yes, for anyone who wants an Atlantic beach town with warm afternoons and can afford to lose one day in four to rain. Surfers, walkers, and couples on a four-night stop between Lisbon and the north are all well served. No, for a family flying eight hours in search of guaranteed sand time, and no for any trip whose mood cannot absorb one wet Wednesday out of four days.
If the answer is no, take September and accept high-summer timing. Its normals are 80.2°F by day and 63.3 at night, with 1.41 inches of rain across 3.7 days, roughly a third of October’s total on fewer than half the wet days. You give up the later, quieter edge of the season, and you gain a sky that mostly stays out of the way.
October is the only month that pairs a 70-plus afternoon with an off-season calendar on this coast, and 63.7°F is the next reading down.
The last word
Book the four nights, take the refundable rate, rent the car. The figure worth carrying in your head is the one the two wet months share: October and November are 0.46 inch apart on rain and 9.0°F apart in the afternoon, and that gap is the entire argument for coming now rather than waiting. Land, put the fleece in the day bag, and be standing on Praia do Sul by ten, with light until 6:59.
Sources & data for this guide
- October normals, highs, lows and precipitation · IPMA (Instituto Português do Mar e da Atmosfera), climate normals 1991-2020, station 579 Lisboa Gago Coutinho, altitude 103.9 m · checked Sep 23, 2026
- Rain-day counts at the 1 mm and 10 mm thresholds · IPMA normals 1991-2020, same station · checked Sep 23, 2026
- September and November normals used in the comparison · IPMA normals 1991-2020, same station and period as October · checked Sep 23, 2026
- Sunrise 06:45 UTC, sunset 17:59 UTC and 11 h 14 min of daylight on October 15, converted to local time · sunrise-sunset.org · checked Sep 23, 2026
- The station stands inland at Lisbon’s airport, not on the Ericeira seafront · we serve it as a regional signal and say so in the body
- We could not verify an October sea-surface temperature for Ericeira, a municipal lodging-tax rate, any venue’s hours or ticket price, or the exact date clocks change in late October · no figure is given for any of them
- We found no occupancy or monthly room-rate series for Ericeira, so no month is ranked cheapest or most expensive
- No October event dates were verified, so none are listed · check operators and the municipality when you book