Weather in Swansea in August

A good month. August works. It is not the peak, but nothing about it fights you. You should expect rain on 17 days of the month, which is more days wet than dry.

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

This is persistent light rain rather than storms: 17 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; the day barely swings — 4.8 °C between the overnight low and the afternoon high. Across the twenty years measured, the hottest August day reached 26.9 °C and the coldest night fell to 10.3 °C, and the wettest single day dropped 28 mm — roughly 30% 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 157 mm against 28 mm in the driest. In a month this wet, even a tame spread is a lot of rain in absolute terms — the 94 mm average is a reasonable planning figure, not a promise.

Wind is light at 14.3 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 °C in July, 19 here, 17.6 in September. Nothing about the timing within the month matters much.

Daylight in August

14.7 hours of daylight, losing 1.8 hours across the month. That is between Swansea's extremes of 16.6 and 7.9 hours, so days are long enough not to constrain the plan.

An inland climate

Despite being inland, the year stays fairly even: 14.8 °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 Swansea versus nearby

If Swansea is one option among several, the nearby comparison is worth making. Birmingham is a better bet in August — within a degree on temperature, 3 days less rain. Manchester is close enough to be a coin toss — within a degree on temperature, 2 days more rain.

So: August is effectively as good as it gets here — 3 points behind July, which is inside the margin where the weather stops being the deciding factor and price starts being it.

Every month in Swansea

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