Weather in Akureyri in May

The month to avoid. May is the month most people should skip in Akureyri. Highs sit at 1.2 °C and the day is short; this is an indoors-with-excursions month, not an outdoors-all-day one.

May ranks 5 of 12 in Akureyri: past the worst of the year but short of June, which is the month to book if the dates are open.

This is persistent light rain rather than storms: 18 wet days but only 2 heavy ones. It rarely cancels anything outright, and it rarely fully clears either. A jacket beats an umbrella. Layers, and a genuinely waterproof outer — at 1.2 °C the difference between a good day and a miserable one is entirely down to what you are wearing.

What the averages hide

Averages flatten a month, and this one hides a few things: 25 nights drop below freezing, so anything left outside stays frozen; the day barely swings — 4.5 °C between the overnight low and the afternoon high. Across the twenty years measured, the hottest May day reached 11 °C and the coldest night fell to -14.1 °C, and the wettest single day dropped 33 mm — roughly 38% of the month's rain in one day.

May is statistically steady but not small: the year-to-year variation is modest in relative terms, yet the wettest May on record still delivered 150 mm against 46 mm in the driest. In a month this wet, even a tame spread is a lot of rain in absolute terms — the 86 mm average is a reasonable planning figure, not a promise.

Wind is light at 9.8 km/h, so the temperature on the page is close to the temperature on your skin, and humidity runs at 92%, which at 1.2 °C means damp rather than muggy — the kind of cold that gets into a coat and stays there.

How May sits in the year

The month is on the way up: 2.2 °C warmer than April, and June adds another 6.1 °C. Late in the month feels noticeably different from the start of it, which is worth knowing if the trip is short.

Daylight in May

18.9 hours of daylight, gaining 3.8 hours across the month. That is between Akureyri's extremes of 23 and 3.2 hours, so days are long enough not to constrain the plan.

An inland climate

Despite being inland, the year stays fairly even: 18.9 °C between the year's warmest afternoons and coldest nights.

How busy it gets

Quiet. Few other visitors, cheaper rooms, and a real chance some seasonal operators are shut.

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

May in Akureyri versus nearby

If Akureyri is one option among several, the nearby comparison is worth making. Reykjavík is a better bet in May — 7.3 °C warmer, 3 days less rain. Bergen is a better bet in May — 12 °C warmer, the same number of rain days.

So: May works, with June the better month by 18 points if the dates can move. If they cannot, nothing here should stop you booking.

Every month in Akureyri

See all twelve months in Akureyri, or where else to go in May.