Weather in Manchester in August

A good month. August works. It is not the peak, but nothing about it fights you. You should expect rain on 19 days of the month, which is more days wet than dry.

August ranks 3 of 12 in Manchester. Only June scores clearly higher, and the difference is small enough to be settled by price rather than weather.

This is persistent light rain rather than storms: 19 wet days but only 2 heavy ones. It rarely cancels anything outright, and it rarely fully clears either. A jacket beats an umbrella. Nothing specialised needed — this is the month you pack for the trip rather than for the weather.

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 August reaches 30 °C. Across the twenty years measured, the hottest August day reached 28 °C and the coldest night fell to 5.9 °C, and the wettest single day dropped 39 mm — roughly 41% of the month's rain in one day.

August is statistically steady but not small: the year-to-year variation is modest in relative terms, yet the wettest August on record still delivered 184 mm against 31 mm in the driest. In a month this wet, even a tame spread is a lot of rain in absolute terms — the 96 mm average is a reasonable planning figure, not a promise.

Wind is light at 11 km/h, so the temperature on the page is close to the temperature on your skin, and humidity runs at 85%, high enough to notice on the warm days without dominating them.

How August sits in the year

Temperatures hold steady either side: 19.6 °C in July, 19.3 here, 17.2 in September. Nothing about the timing within the month matters much.

Daylight in August

14.9 hours of daylight, losing 1.9 hours across the month. That is between Manchester's extremes of 17 and 7.5 hours, so days are long enough not to constrain the plan.

An inland climate

Despite being inland, the year stays fairly even: 17.8 °C between the year's warmest afternoons and coldest nights.

How busy it gets

Peak season. Expect the highest prices of the year and to be booking well ahead.

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

August in Manchester versus nearby

If Manchester is one option among several, the nearby comparison is worth making. Birmingham is a better bet in August — within a degree on temperature, 5 days less rain. Kingston upon Hull is a better bet in August — within a degree on temperature, 5 days less rain.

So: August is effectively as good as it gets here — 2 points behind June, which is inside the margin where the weather stops being the deciding factor and price starts being it.

Every month in Manchester

See all twelve months in Manchester, or where else to go in August.