Weather in New York City in April

Shoulder season. April sits in between. You will get good days and you will lose some. Highs sit at 12 °C and the day is short; this is an indoors-with-excursions month, not an outdoors-all-day one.

April ranks 8 of 12 in New York City: past the worst of the year but short of September, which is the month to book if the dates are open.

Rain on 11 days, 3 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 °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 — 5.9 °C between the overnight low and the afternoon high. Across the twenty years measured, the hottest April day reached 24.9 °C and the coldest night fell to -2.2 °C, and the wettest single day dropped 99 mm — roughly 93% 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 228 mm against 45 mm in the driest. In a month this wet, even a tame spread is a lot of rain in absolute terms — the 107 mm average is a reasonable planning figure, not a promise.

Wind is light at 14.8 km/h, so the temperature on the page is close to the temperature on your skin, and humidity runs at 82%, which at 12 °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: 5.1 °C warmer than March, and May adds another 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

13.3 hours of daylight, gaining 1.3 hours across the month. That is between New York City's extremes of 15.1 and 9.3 hours, so days are long enough not to constrain the plan.

Sea temperature

The sea sits at about 8.1 °C in April — too cold to swim without a wetsuit. The sea peaks at 24.4 °C in August and bottoms out at 6.8 °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 New York City versus nearby

If New York City is one option among several, the nearby comparison is worth making. Philadelphia is a better bet in April — 5.1 °C warmer, the same number of rain days. Boston is close enough to be a coin toss — within a degree on temperature, the same number of rain days.

So: April is a compromise. September is 28 points better and is what New York City 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 New York City

See all twelve months in New York City, or where else to go in April.