Weather in Manaus in May

Shoulder season. May is shoulder season in Manaus — cheaper, quieter, and a genuine gamble. You should expect rain on 26 days of the month, which is more days wet than dry.

May ranks 4 of 12 in Manaus: past the worst of the year but short of August, which is the month to book if the dates are open.

Rain on 26 of the month's 31 days, 6 of them heavy. At that frequency a wet-weather backup is not a contingency, it is the itinerary — book the indoor things first and treat the clear days as the bonus. Natural fibres and a second shirt for the day. At 89% nothing dries, including you.

What the averages hide

Averages flatten a month, and this one hides a few things: it never really gets hot: not one day in an average May reaches 30 °C; the day barely swings — 3.9 °C between the overnight low and the afternoon high. Across the twenty years measured, the hottest May day reached 30.7 °C and the coldest night fell to 22.9 °C, and the wettest single day dropped 74 mm — roughly 36% 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 403 mm against 92 mm in the driest. In a month this wet, even a tame spread is a lot of rain in absolute terms — the 205 mm average is a reasonable planning figure, not a promise.

Wind is light at 2.3 km/h, so the temperature on the page is close to the temperature on your skin, and humidity at 89% is the real story though — it is the number that decides how the day feels, not the 28.5 °C.

How May sits in the year

Temperatures hold steady either side: 28.5 °C in April, 28.5 here, 28.5 in June. Nothing about the timing within the month matters much. Rain is the thing that moves: June brings 6 days less of it, so pushing the dates later buys drier weather.

Daylight in May

Manaus sits close enough to the equator that daylight barely moves all year — 12 hours in May, against a range of just 0.4 hours across the whole calendar. Sunrise and sunset land at roughly the same time whenever you come.

An inland climate

Despite being inland, the year stays fairly even: 8.9 °C between the year's warmest afternoons and coldest nights.

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 Manaus versus nearby

If Manaus is one option among several, the nearby comparison is worth making. Belém is close enough to be a coin toss — within a degree on temperature, 4 days more rain. Cusco is a better bet in May — 11.7 °C cooler, 23 days less rain.

So: May works, with August the better month by 11 points if the dates can move. If they cannot, nothing here should stop you booking.

Every month in Manaus

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