Weather in Zermatt in May

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

May ranks 6 of 12 in Zermatt: past the worst of the year but short of August, which is the month to book if the dates are open.

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 12.3 °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: 6 nights fall below freezing. Across the twenty years measured, the hottest May day reached 21.9 °C and the coldest night fell to -7.1 °C, and the wettest single day dropped 44 mm — roughly 40% 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 206 mm against 60 mm in the driest. In a month this wet, even a tame spread is a lot of rain in absolute terms — the 109 mm average is a reasonable planning figure, not a promise.

Wind is light at 5.9 km/h, so the temperature on the page is close to the temperature on your skin, and humidity runs at 78%, which at 12.3 °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: 5.4 °C warmer than April, and June adds another 4.8 °C. Late in the month feels noticeably different from the start of it, which is worth knowing if the trip is short. Rain has already shifted: 5 days more than April had.

Daylight in May

14.9 hours of daylight, gaining 1.2 hours across the month. That is between Zermatt's extremes of 15.7 and 8.7 hours, so days are long enough not to constrain the plan.

An inland climate

With no coast nearby, the year swings a fair way — 28.7 °C between the warmest afternoons and the coldest nights, wider than any coastal city at this latitude would manage. At 1608 m, altitude is doing as much work here as latitude: thinner air means fierce sun by day and heat that leaves the moment it sets.

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 Zermatt versus nearby

If Zermatt is one option among several, the nearby comparison is worth making. Chamonix-Mont-Blanc is a better bet in May — 3.9 °C warmer, the same number of rain days. Luzern is a better bet in May — 6.5 °C warmer, 1 day more rain.

So: May is a compromise. August is 25 points better and is what Zermatt 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 Zermatt

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