Weather in Lima in May

Prime time. May is about as good as Lima gets. Highs average 29.6 °C, lows 21.5 °C, and rain falls on 0 days — nothing in the month is working against you.

Lima barely has seasons. May scores 88 out of 100 against a best of 94 in July — a gap small enough that the month you choose matters far less here than the week you choose.

Rain is not a factor worth planning around this month. Pack for 29.6 °C days and 21.5 °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: 10 days top 30 °C — hot spells arrive, but they break. Across the twenty years measured, the hottest May day reached 32.1 °C and the coldest night fell to 18.2 °C.

May is dependably dry, and that reliability is the point: across the twenty years measured, the wettest May on record still only managed 10 mm, and the driest managed 0 mm. There is no meaningful variability to plan around, which makes this one of the few months anywhere that you can build a fixed outdoor itinerary against without a fallback. The wettest single day in twenty years of Mays brought 6 mm. Rain simply is not the variable that decides this trip — heat, crowds and cost are.

Wind is light at 8.5 km/h, so the temperature on the page is close to the temperature on your skin, and humidity is unremarkable at 67%.

How May sits in the year

Temperatures hold steady either side: 30.4 °C in April, 29.6 here, 28.9 in June. Nothing about the timing within the month matters much.

Daylight in May

Lima sits close enough to the equator that daylight barely moves all year — 11.6 hours in May, against a range of just 1.4 hours across the whole calendar. Sunrise and sunset land at roughly the same time whenever you come.

Sea temperature

The sea sits at about 19.2 °C in May — swimmable, but it takes a moment to commit. The sea peaks at 22.7 °C in February and bottoms out at 16.6 °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. May is the value pick for Lima: it scores within 6 points of July without carrying July's prices.

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

May in Lima versus nearby

If Lima is one option among several, the nearby comparison is worth making. Trujillo is the weaker option in May — 7.4 °C warmer, 3 days more rain. Cusco is close enough to be a coin toss — 12.8 °C cooler, 3 days more rain.

So: May is effectively as good as it gets here — 6 points behind July, which is inside the margin where the weather stops being the deciding factor and price starts being it.

Every month in Lima

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