Weather in Le Havre in April

Shoulder season. April is shoulder season in Le Havre — cheaper, quieter, and a genuine gamble. Highs sit at 12.9 °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 Le Havre: past the worst of the year but short of July, which is the month to book if the dates are open.

Rain on 10 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 12.9 °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 — 5.5 °C between the overnight low and the afternoon high. Across the twenty years measured, the hottest April day reached 21.5 °C and the coldest night fell to 0.2 °C, and the wettest single day dropped 37 mm — roughly 82% of the month's rain in one day.

April is moderately variable: 5 mm in the driest year against 106 mm in the wettest, around an average of 45 mm. Roughly two Aprils 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 82%, which at 12.9 °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: 2.7 °C warmer than March, and May adds another 2.5 °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

13.7 hours of daylight, gaining 1.8 hours across the month. That is between Le Havre's extremes of 16.3 and 8.2 hours, so days are long enough not to constrain the plan.

Sea temperature

The sea sits at about 9.6 °C in April — too cold to swim without a wetsuit. The sea peaks at 17.4 °C in September and bottoms out at 8.6 °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 Le Havre versus nearby

If Le Havre is one option among several, the nearby comparison is worth making. Paris is a better bet in April — 3.4 °C warmer, the same number of rain days. London is close enough to be a coin toss — within a degree on temperature, 1 day more rain.

So: April is a compromise. July is 21 points better and is what Le Havre 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 Le Havre

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