Weather in Townsville in May

Prime time. If you get to pick your dates, May is the one. Highs average 28.1 °C, lows 18.8 °C, and rain falls on 5 days — nothing in the month is working against you.

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

Rain falls on only 5 days, so an itinerary with no wet-weather fallback is a reasonable risk. Pack for 28.1 °C days and 18.8 °C nights; the spread matters more here than any single number.

What the averages hide

Averages flatten a month, and this one hides a few things: 6 days top 30 °C — hot spells arrive, but they break. Across the twenty years measured, the hottest May day reached 33.7 °C and the coldest night fell to 9.8 °C, and the wettest single day dropped 94 mm — roughly 336% of the month's rain in one day.

This is the volatile part. May rainfall has ranged from 1 mm to 129 mm across the twenty years measured — a 128 mm spread around an average of 28 mm. The average is real but almost no individual May looks like it, so treat the figure as the middle of a wide range rather than a forecast.

Wind is light at 10.9 km/h, so the temperature on the page is close to the temperature on your skin, and humidity is unremarkable at 71%.

How May sits in the year

The month is on the way down: 1.9 °C cooler than April, with June dropping another 1.9 °C. The first week and the last are not the same trip.

Daylight in May

May sits at the dark end of Townsville's year — 11.2 hours of daylight against 13.3 at midsummer, losing 0.4 hours across the month. Sightseeing days are genuinely shorter, and an itinerary built for summer will not fit.

Sea temperature

The sea sits at about 26.2 °C in May — warm enough to stay in as long as you like. The sea peaks at 29 °C in February and bottoms out at 24 °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 Townsville versus nearby

If Townsville is one option among several, the nearby comparison is worth making. Airlie Beach is close enough to be a coin toss — 2.4 °C cooler, 3 days more rain. Cairns is the weaker option in May — within a degree on temperature, 9 days more rain.

So: May works, with August the better month by 9 points if the dates can move. If they cannot, nothing here should stop you booking.

Every month in Townsville

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