Weather in Tromsø in August

A hard month. August is a hard month in Tromsø, and worth planning around. You should expect rain on 18 days of the month, which is more days wet than dry.

August ranks 2 of 12 in Tromsø. Only July scores clearly higher, and the difference is small enough to be settled by price rather than weather. That is not a contradiction: August is among the best months Tromsø has, and it is still hard going. This is a city with no easy season rather than a city you have caught at a bad time.

Rain on 18 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 14.1 °C the difference between a good day and a miserable one is entirely down to what you are wearing.

What the averages hide

The averages here are honest — no hidden extremes worth planning around. Across the twenty years measured, the hottest August day reached 26.9 °C and the coldest night fell to -0.1 °C, and the wettest single day dropped 41 mm — roughly 36% 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 209 mm against 36 mm in the driest. In a month this wet, even a tame spread is a lot of rain in absolute terms — the 113 mm average is a reasonable planning figure, not a promise.

Wind is light at 2.2 km/h, so the temperature on the page is close to the temperature on your skin, and humidity runs at 85%, which at 14.1 °C means damp rather than muggy — the kind of cold that gets into a coat and stays there.

How August sits in the year

Temperatures hold steady either side: 15.5 °C in July, 14.1 here, 9.5 in September. Nothing about the timing within the month matters much.

Daylight in August

18.3 hours of daylight, losing 5.6 hours across the month. That is between Tromsø's extremes of 24 and 0 hours, so days are long enough not to constrain the plan.

An inland climate

With no coast nearby, the year swings a fair way — 26.3 °C between the warmest afternoons and the coldest nights, wider than any coastal city at this latitude would manage.

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 Tromsø versus nearby

If Tromsø is one option among several, the nearby comparison is worth making. Rovaniemi is a better bet in August — 3 °C warmer, 2 days less rain. Umeå is a better bet in August — 4.2 °C warmer, 3 days less rain.

So: August is effectively as good as it gets here — 5 points behind July, which is inside the margin where the weather stops being the deciding factor and price starts being it.

Every month in Tromsø

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