Weather in Cork in November

A hard month. November is a hard month in Cork, and worth planning around. Highs sit at 10.8 °C and the day is short; this is an indoors-with-excursions month, not an outdoors-all-day one.

November ranks 10 of 12 — near the bottom of Cork's year. July is the month that works, and the swing between the two is 36 points, which is a different holiday rather than a slightly better one.

Rain on 18 days, 4 of them heavy. Enough to need a plan B, not enough to need a plan around it. Layers, and a genuinely waterproof outer — at 10.8 °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: the day barely swings — 4.6 °C between the overnight low and the afternoon high. Across the twenty years measured, the hottest November day reached 16.3 °C and the coldest night fell to -2.8 °C, and the wettest single day dropped 99 mm — roughly 80% of the month's rain in one day.

November is moderately variable: 47 mm in the driest year against 257 mm in the wettest, around an average of 124 mm. Roughly two Novembers in three land near that average, and the third does something else entirely.

Wind is light at 14.3 km/h, so the temperature on the page is close to the temperature on your skin, and humidity runs at 93%, which at 10.8 °C means damp rather than muggy — the kind of cold that gets into a coat and stays there.

How November sits in the year

The month is on the way down: 3.3 °C cooler than October, with December dropping another 1.7 °C. The first week and the last are not the same trip.

Daylight in November

8.9 hours of daylight, losing 1.6 hours across the month. That is between Cork's extremes of 16.7 and 7.8 hours, so days are long enough not to constrain the plan.

Sea temperature

The sea sits at about 12.5 °C in November — too cold to swim without a wetsuit. The sea peaks at 16.6 °C in August and bottoms out at 9 °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

Off season. The genuine off season: cheapest by a distance, with the caveat that some tours and restaurants close entirely.

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

November in Cork versus nearby

If Cork is one option among several, the nearby comparison is worth making. Galway is close enough to be a coin toss — within a degree on temperature, 1 day more rain. Dublin is close enough to be a coin toss — within a degree on temperature, the same number of rain days.

So: November is a compromise. July is 29 points better and is what Cork is actually like at its best — worth moving the trip for if that is possible, and worth adjusting expectations for if it is not.

Every month in Cork

See all twelve months in Cork, or where else to go in November.