Weather in Tromsø in May

The month to avoid. Of the twelve, May is the one to avoid. Highs sit at 6.8 °C and the day is short; this is an indoors-with-excursions month, not an outdoors-all-day one.

May ranks 5 of 12 in Tromsø: 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. Layers, and a genuinely waterproof outer — at 6.8 °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: 13 nights fall below freezing; the day barely swings — 6 °C between the overnight low and the afternoon high. Across the twenty years measured, the hottest May day reached 25.3 °C and the coldest night fell to -9.1 °C, and the wettest single day dropped 27 mm — roughly 28% of the month's rain in one day.

May is statistically steady but not small: the year-to-year variation is modest in relative terms, yet the wettest May on record still delivered 183 mm against 35 mm in the driest. In a month this wet, even a tame spread is a lot of rain in absolute terms — the 95 mm average is a reasonable planning figure, not a promise.

Wind is light at 5.2 km/h, so the temperature on the page is close to the temperature on your skin, and humidity runs at 85%, which at 6.8 °C means damp rather than muggy — the kind of cold that gets into a coat and stays there.

How May sits in the year

The month is on the way up: 6.2 °C warmer than April, and June adds another 4.7 °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

21.7 hours of daylight, gaining 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

Shoulder. The value months — prices ease off and you get the place closer to itself.

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

May in Tromsø versus nearby

If Tromsø is one option among several, the nearby comparison is worth making. Rovaniemi is a better bet in May — 4 °C warmer, 3 days less rain. Umeå is a better bet in May — 5 °C warmer, 5 days less rain.

So: May is a compromise. July is 25 points better and is what Tromsø 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 Tromsø

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