Weather in Hobart in May

Shoulder season. May is shoulder season in Hobart — cheaper, quieter, and a genuine gamble. Highs sit at 14.3 °C and the day is short; this is an indoors-with-excursions month, not an outdoors-all-day one.

May ranks 8 of 12 in Hobart: past the worst of the year but short of January, which is the month to book if the dates are open.

Rain on 12 days, 1 of them heavy. Enough to need a plan B, not enough to need a plan around it. Layers, and a genuinely waterproof outer — at 14.3 °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 — 5.9 °C between the overnight low and the afternoon high. Across the twenty years measured, the hottest May day reached 22.8 °C and the coldest night fell to 4.1 °C, and the wettest single day dropped 29 mm — roughly 53% 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 132 mm against 21 mm in the driest. In a month this wet, even a tame spread is a lot of rain in absolute terms — the 55 mm average is a reasonable planning figure, not a promise.

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 83%, which at 14.3 °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: 2.9 °C cooler than April, with June dropping another 1.8 °C. The first week and the last are not the same trip.

Daylight in May

9.7 hours of daylight, losing 1 hours across the month. That is between Hobart's extremes of 15.3 and 9 hours, so days are long enough not to constrain the plan.

Sea temperature

The sea sits at about 14.4 °C in May — cold — a quick dip rather than a swim, and a wetsuit if you are in for longer. The sea peaks at 16.6 °C in February and bottoms out at 12.4 °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 Hobart versus nearby

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

So: May is a compromise. January is 25 points better and is what Hobart 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 Hobart

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