Weather in Positano in May

Prime time. May is about as good as Positano gets. Highs average 19.7 °C, lows 17.5 °C, and rain falls on 8 days — nothing in the month is working against you.

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

Rain on 8 days, 1 of them heavy. Enough to need a plan B, not enough to need a plan around it. 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 May reaches 30 °C; the day barely swings — 2.2 °C between the overnight low and the afternoon high. Across the twenty years measured, the hottest May day reached 25.6 °C and the coldest night fell to 12.9 °C.

May is moderately variable: 5 mm in the driest year against 101 mm in the wettest, around an average of 41 mm. Roughly two Mays in three land near that average, and the third does something else entirely.

Wind is light at 11.5 km/h, so the temperature on the page is close to the temperature on your skin, and humidity runs at 77%, high enough to notice on the warm days without dominating them.

How May sits in the year

The month is on the way up: 3.4 °C warmer than April, and June adds another 3.9 °C. Late in the month feels noticeably different from the start of it, which is worth knowing if the trip is short.

Daylight in May

14.4 hours of daylight, gaining 1 hours across the month. That is between Positano'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 19 °C in May — swimmable, but it takes a moment to commit. The sea peaks at 26.7 °C in August and bottoms out at 14.3 °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

Busy. Popular without being frantic; book the things you care about, improvise the rest.

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

May in Positano versus nearby

If Positano is one option among several, the nearby comparison is worth making. Naples is close enough to be a coin toss — 4.2 °C warmer, 1 day more rain. Bari is close enough to be a coin toss — 4.2 °C warmer, the same number of rain days.

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 Positano

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