Weather in Airlie Beach in September

Prime time. If you get to pick your dates, September is the one. Highs average 26.3 °C, lows 19.4 °C, and rain falls on 3 days — nothing in the month is working against you.

September ranks 2 of 12 in Airlie Beach. Only August scores clearly higher, and the difference is small enough to be settled by price rather than weather.

Rain falls on only 3 days, so an itinerary with no wet-weather fallback is a reasonable risk. Nothing specialised needed — this is the month you pack for the trip rather than for the weather.

What the averages hide

The averages here are honest — no hidden extremes worth planning around. Across the twenty years measured, the hottest September day reached 32.8 °C and the coldest night fell to 13.6 °C, and the wettest single day dropped 55 mm — roughly 393% of the month's rain in one day.

This is the volatile part. September rainfall has ranged from 0 mm to 93 mm across the twenty years measured — a 93 mm spread around an average of 14 mm. The average is real but almost no individual September looks like it, so treat the figure as the middle of a wide range rather than a forecast.

Wind is light at 9 km/h, so the temperature on the page is close to the temperature on your skin, and humidity is unremarkable at 70%.

How September sits in the year

The month is on the way up: 2.1 °C warmer than August, and October adds another 1.8 °C. Late in the month feels noticeably different from the start of it, which is worth knowing if the trip is short.

Daylight in September

12 hours of daylight, gaining 0.6 hours across the month. That is between Airlie Beach's extremes of 13.3 and 10.9 hours, so days are long enough not to constrain the plan.

Sea temperature

The sea sits at about 24 °C in September — warm enough to stay in as long as you like. The sea peaks at 28.6 °C in February and bottoms out at 23.1 °C — water lags the air by a month or two, which is why the best swimming often comes after the best weather.

How busy it gets

Peak season. Expect the highest prices of the year and to be booking well ahead.

Crowd levels are estimated from climate desirability and school-holiday calendars, not from visitor numbers.

September in Airlie Beach versus nearby

If Airlie Beach is one option among several, the nearby comparison is worth making. Mackay is close enough to be a coin toss — 2.6 °C cooler, the same number of rain days. Townsville is the weaker option in September — 3.5 °C warmer, 1 day less rain.

So: September is effectively as good as it gets here — 0 points behind August, which is inside the margin where the weather stops being the deciding factor and price starts being it.

Every month in Airlie Beach

See all twelve months in Airlie Beach, or where else to go in September.