Weather in Nice in March

A good month. March works. It is not the peak, but nothing about it fights you. Highs sit at 13.8 °C and the day is short; this is an indoors-with-excursions month, not an outdoors-all-day one.

March ranks 8 of 12 in Nice: past the worst of the year but short of July, which is the month to book if the dates are open.

Rain on 7 days, 2 of them heavy. Enough to need a plan B, not enough to need a plan around it. Layers, and a genuinely waterproof outer — at 13.8 °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 — 2.6 °C between the overnight low and the afternoon high. Across the twenty years measured, the hottest March day reached 21.6 °C and the coldest night fell to 3.7 °C, and the wettest single day dropped 46 mm — roughly 74% of the month's rain in one day.

This is the volatile part. March rainfall has ranged from 3 mm to 202 mm across the twenty years measured — a 199 mm spread around an average of 62 mm. The average is real but almost no individual March looks like it, so treat the figure as the middle of a wide range rather than a forecast.

Wind is light at 14.9 km/h, so the temperature on the page is close to the temperature on your skin, and humidity is unremarkable at 74%.

How March sits in the year

The month is on the way up: 1.8 °C warmer than February, and April adds another 2 °C. Late in the month feels noticeably different from the start of it, which is worth knowing if the trip is short.

Daylight in March

11.8 hours of daylight, gaining 1.5 hours across the month. That is between Nice's extremes of 15.4 and 9 hours, so days are long enough not to constrain the plan.

Sea temperature

The sea sits at about 13.4 °C in March — too cold to swim without a wetsuit. The sea peaks at 24 °C in August and bottoms out at 13.1 °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

Off season. The genuine off season: cheapest by a distance, with the caveat that some tours and restaurants close entirely.

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

March in Nice versus nearby

If Nice is one option among several, the nearby comparison is worth making. Genoa is close enough to be a coin toss — within a degree on temperature, 1 day more rain. Marseille is a better bet in March — 2.5 °C warmer, 1 day less rain.

So: March is a compromise. July is 28 points better and is what Nice 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 Nice

See all twelve months in Nice, or where else to go in March.