Madeira weather, season by season

On the 10-year averages for Funchal, August is the driest month of the year: about 11 mm of rain on roughly 3 days, with July next at 14 mm. The wettest is December at 91 mm. Rain here is a season rather than a constant, and every month has a page of its own with the full figures.

Weather in Madeira in August

The island is a ridge standing across the trade winds. Air pushed up the north side cools, turns into cloud and drops its water there, then comes back down the south side warmer and drier. Over the year the north-coast point averages 864 mm of rain on 125 rainy days against 766 mm on 111 days in Funchal, and the split is mostly a winter one: at its widest, in March, the north takes 125 mm against 85 mm in the south, while in high summer the north is as dry as the south or drier. Both of those points sit at sea level, so neither of them measures the central ridge, which is where the cloud actually parks.

About 11.5 °C, and the figure barely moves with the season: day highs at Pico do Arieiro (1,818 m) sit between 11.2 and 11.7 °C below Funchal in every month of the year. As annual averages that is 10.7 °C on the summit against 22.2 °C on the coast, and the summit's coldest month averages 7 °C by day. Walking from the coast to a peak means dressing for two climates in one day.

Counted on rainy days, the four driest months in Funchal are May, June, July, August, with between 3 and 8.7 wet days each against 12.5 in March. Altitude changes the answer: those same months are the mildest high up, where the year averages 10.7 °C by day. Levada walks in sheltered valleys work in every month, so the harder question is which side of the island to walk on a given day, not which month to come.

Weather in Madeira in May

The Atlantic off Funchal averages 22 °C across the year, from 19.4 °C in March to 24.9 °C in August: a spread of only 5.5 °C between the coolest month and the warmest. 6 of the twelve months sit at 22 °C or above. It never turns cold and it never turns Mediterranean.

Weather in Madeira in August

Less than most of Europe. Funchal's coolest month averages 18.7 °C by day and its warmest 27.6 °C, a spread of 8.9 °C across the whole year, and no month averages a night below 13.6 °C. What is seasonal here is water, not temperature: about 65% of the year's 766 mm of rain falls between October and March. The summits follow the same curve, 11.5 °C lower.