Weather in Jacksonville in May

Shoulder season. May is shoulder season in Jacksonville — cheaper, quieter, and a genuine gamble. Highs average 31.2 °C, lows 18.8 °C, and rain falls on 10 days — nothing in the month is working against you.

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

Rain on 10 days, 3 of them heavy. Enough to need a plan B, not enough to need a plan around it. Pack for 31.2 °C days and 18.8 °C nights; the spread matters more here than any single number.

What the averages hide

Averages flatten a month, and this one hides a few things: 20 days top 30 °C, making the heat continuous rather than occasional. Across the twenty years measured, the hottest May day reached 41.1 °C and the coldest night fell to 9.4 °C, and the wettest single day dropped 74 mm — roughly 82% of the month's rain in one day.

May is moderately variable: 22 mm in the driest year against 269 mm in the wettest, around an average of 90 mm. Roughly two Mays in three land near that average, and the third does something else entirely.

Wind is light at 2.4 km/h, so the temperature on the page is close to the temperature on your skin, and humidity is unremarkable at 68%.

How May sits in the year

Temperatures hold steady either side: 27.4 °C in April, 31.2 here, 32.4 in June. Nothing about the timing within the month matters much. Rain is the thing that moves: June brings 11 days more of it, so the earlier half of a flexible trip is the safer half.

Daylight in May

May is at or near the longest days of Jacksonville's year: 13.7 hours of daylight, gaining 0.6 hours across the month. Evenings are the real gain — dinner outdoors still happens in full light.

Sea temperature

The sea sits at about 24.3 °C in May — warm enough to stay in as long as you like. The sea peaks at 28.4 °C in August and bottoms out at 19.5 °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

Shoulder. The value months — prices ease off and you get the place closer to itself.

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

May in Jacksonville versus nearby

If Jacksonville is one option among several, the nearby comparison is worth making. Tallahassee is close enough to be a coin toss — within a degree on temperature, the same number of rain days. Tampa is close enough to be a coin toss — within a degree on temperature, 2 days more rain.

So: May is a compromise. November is 25 points better and is what Jacksonville 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 Jacksonville

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