Weather in Kristiansand in April

A hard month. April asks something of you. Go in knowing what. Highs sit at 8 °C and the day is short; this is an indoors-with-excursions month, not an outdoors-all-day one.

April ranks 6 of 12 in Kristiansand: past the worst of the year but short of July, 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 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 April day reached 14.9 °C and the coldest night fell to -2.7 °C, and the wettest single day dropped 36 mm — roughly 55% of the month's rain in one day.

April is statistically steady but not small: the year-to-year variation is modest in relative terms, yet the wettest April on record still delivered 123 mm against 18 mm in the driest. In a month this wet, even a tame spread is a lot of rain in absolute terms — the 65 mm average is a reasonable planning figure, not a promise.

Wind is light at 12.2 km/h, so the temperature on the page is close to the temperature on your skin, and humidity runs at 84%, which at 8 °C means damp rather than muggy — the kind of cold that gets into a coat and stays there.

How April sits in the year

The month is on the way up: 3.4 °C warmer than March, and May adds another 4.1 °C. Late in the month feels noticeably different from the start of it, which is worth knowing if the trip is short.

Daylight in April

14.3 hours of daylight, gaining 2.5 hours across the month. That is between Kristiansand's extremes of 18.2 and 6.5 hours, so days are long enough not to constrain the plan.

Sea temperature

The sea sits at about 6.5 °C in April — too cold to swim without a wetsuit. The sea peaks at 16.9 °C in August and bottoms out at 5.3 °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.

April in Kristiansand versus nearby

If Kristiansand is one option among several, the nearby comparison is worth making. Stavanger is close enough to be a coin toss — within a degree on temperature, 3 days more rain. Gothenburg is close enough to be a coin toss — within a degree on temperature, 1 day less rain.

So: April is a compromise. July is 27 points better and is what Kristiansand 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 Kristiansand

See all twelve months in Kristiansand, or where else to go in April.