Weather in Coffs Harbour in May

Prime time. If you get to pick your dates, May is the one. Highs average 21.1 °C, lows 16.8 °C, and rain falls on 11 days — nothing in the month is working against you.

May ranks 4 of 12 in Coffs Harbour: past the worst of the year but short of August, which is the month to book if the dates are open.

Rain on 11 days, 2 of them heavy. Enough to need a plan B, not enough to need a plan around it. Nothing specialised needed — this is the month you pack for the trip rather than for the weather.

What the averages hide

Averages flatten a month, and this one hides a few things: it never really gets hot: not one day in an average May reaches 30 °C; the day barely swings — 4.3 °C between the overnight low and the afternoon high. Across the twenty years measured, the hottest May day reached 27.3 °C and the coldest night fell to 11.2 °C, and the wettest single day dropped 128 mm — roughly 154% of the month's rain in one day.

This is the volatile part. May rainfall has ranged from 9 mm to 231 mm across the twenty years measured — a 222 mm spread around an average of 83 mm. The average is real but almost no individual May looks like it, so treat the figure as the middle of a wide range rather than a forecast.

Wind is light at 11.1 km/h, so the temperature on the page is close to the temperature on your skin, and humidity is unremarkable at 73%.

How May sits in the year

The month is on the way down: 2.3 °C cooler than April, with June dropping another 2 °C. The first week and the last are not the same trip.

Daylight in May

May sits at the dark end of Coffs Harbour's year — 10.6 hours of daylight against 14.1 at midsummer, losing 0.6 hours across the month. Sightseeing days are genuinely shorter, and an itinerary built for summer will not fit.

Sea temperature

The sea sits at about 23.1 °C in May — comfortable for a proper swim. The sea peaks at 25.8 °C in February and bottoms out at 20.5 °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

Busy. Popular without being frantic; book the things you care about, improvise the rest.

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

May in Coffs Harbour versus nearby

If Coffs Harbour is one option among several, the nearby comparison is worth making. Armidale is close enough to be a coin toss — 5.2 °C cooler, 5 days less rain. Byron Bay is close enough to be a coin toss — within a degree on temperature, the same number of rain days.

So: May works, with August the better month by 7 points if the dates can move. If they cannot, nothing here should stop you booking.

Every month in Coffs Harbour

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