Weather in Devonport in May

Shoulder season. May sits in between. You will get good days and you will lose some. Highs sit at 14.8 °C and the day is short; this is an indoors-with-excursions month, not an outdoors-all-day one.

May ranks 7 of 12 in Devonport: past the worst of the year but short of February, 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. Layers, and a genuinely waterproof outer — at 14.8 °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 — 3.4 °C between the overnight low and the afternoon high. Across the twenty years measured, the hottest May day reached 19.3 °C and the coldest night fell to 7.3 °C, and the wettest single day dropped 51 mm — roughly 65% of the month's rain in one day.

May is moderately variable: 26 mm in the driest year against 187 mm in the wettest, around an average of 79 mm. Roughly two Mays in three land near that average, and the third does something else entirely.

Wind is light at 14.2 km/h, so the temperature on the page is close to the temperature on your skin, and humidity runs at 80%, which at 14.8 °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 down: 2.2 °C cooler than April, with June dropping another 1.7 °C. The first week and the last are not the same trip.

Daylight in May

9.9 hours of daylight, losing 1 hours across the month. That is between Devonport's extremes of 15.1 and 9.2 hours, so days are long enough not to constrain the plan.

Sea temperature

The sea sits at about 15.7 °C in May — cold — a quick dip rather than a swim, and a wetsuit if you are in for longer. The sea peaks at 18.3 °C in February and bottoms out at 12.5 °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

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 Devonport versus nearby

If Devonport is one option among several, the nearby comparison is worth making. Burnie is the weaker option in May — within a degree on temperature, 5 days more rain. Launceston is close enough to be a coin toss — within a degree on temperature, 1 day more rain.

So: May is a compromise. February is 26 points better and is what Devonport 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 Devonport

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