Greece Weather by Month: Temperatures, Sea and Rain

Greece weather by month: four climates, one table

Greece weather by month is really four weather stories, not one. The dry, breezy Cyclades; the hot-late south of Crete and the Dodecanese; the green, rain-heavy Ionian; and continental Athens and the mainland each run a measurably different year, and the sea trails the air by roughly a month everywhere.

This page is the data: temperatures, sea, rain and sun, by month and by region. For the decision it feeds, which month actually suits your trip once ferries, open islands and crowds are in play, see the best time to visit Greece. Data here; verdict there.

The figures are long-run normals published by the Hellenic National Meteorological Service, not a forecast. They are averages of decades, so the Athens series here runs 1955 to 1997, and Greece has warmed since; read them as the shape of the year rather than as next week. Each is rounded to whole numbers. Start with the national picture, then drop into your region.

Greece weather at a glance: the month-by-month table

One table gives the shape of the Greek year. It uses Athens as the baseline, the mainland station that underlies most national figures, so read it as central Greece and then adjust with the regional sections below. The islands, and the south above all, run milder in winter and hold their warmth later.

Month	Avg high (°C)	Avg low (°C)	Rain (mm / days)	Sea
Jan	13	5	57 / 13	Cold
Feb	14	5	47 / 10	Coldest
Mar	16	7	41 / 10	Coldest
Apr	20	10	31 / 8	Cool
May	26	14	23 / 6	Warming
Jun	31	18	11 / 4	Warm
Jul	34	21	6 / 2	Warm
Aug	33	21	6 / 2	Peak
Sep	29	17	14 / 3	Peak
Oct	23	13	53 / 7	Still warm
Nov	18	10	58 / 10	Cooling
Dec	14	7	69 / 12	Cold

These are averages, not a forecast, and they hide the four-way split: the same November reads 20°C by day on Rhodes and 15°C in Thessaloniki. The shape holds everywhere, though. July and August are the hot, dry peak, with Athens averaging 33 to 34°C by day and essentially no rain. January and February are the cool, wet floor, around 13 to 14°C by day. Rain concentrates from November to January; June through August are all but rainless. The sea column carries words rather than degrees, and that is deliberate: the sea does not peak with the air, and the section below explains why we will not print a number for it. Search “Greek islands temperature by month” and you get one national row like this; the regional breakdown that follows corrects it wherever the four zones diverge.

Four climates, not one: Greece weather by region

A single national average is where island planning goes wrong. That one row hides how far Greek islands’ temperature by month actually swings: the same week is bone-dry and wind-cooled in the Cyclades, humid and still in the Ionian, and shirt-sleeve-warm on Crete when Thessaloniki wants a coat. Here is each zone in numbers, with the one fact that sets it apart.

The Cyclades: driest, breeziest, coolest-feeling in summer

Here is something no other page on this subject will tell you: the national weather service publishes no Cycladic station in its international climate record. Twenty Greek stations are in it, and not one of them is Naxos, Paros, Syros, Mykonos or Santorini. So the monthly figures you find quoted for “the Cyclades” are modelled, borrowed from elsewhere or simply copied, and we are not going to print a number we cannot stand behind.

What is solid is the mechanism, and the mechanism is the meltemi: the strong, dry north wind that peaks in July and August. It is not only a ferry problem. Low humidity plus a steady breeze makes a Cycladic afternoon feel cooler and fresher than the identical reading in the still, humid Ionian, and it keeps stirring cooler water up from below, which is why the group’s sea lags the south. These are the driest islands in Greece and the windiest, and that pairing is their whole climate. Plan around the wind across the Cyclades, and for how it disrupts crossings, see the Greek island ferries guide.

Crete and the Dodecanese: the longest summer

The south runs the mildest winter and the warmest, longest autumn in Greece. Heraklion and Rhodes both sit near 15°C by day in January, well above the mainland, and both hold daytime highs around 23 to 25°C through October, Rhodes the warmer of the two. This is the zone that answers whether the islands are still hot in October with a plain yes: they are, here, when the Cyclades have already turned. The sea holds its warmth longest here too, a fortnight or more after the northern islands have cooled. See Crete for the longest season and Rhodes in the Dodecanese for the warmest corner.

The Ionian: green, humid, and the wettest region

Corfu, Zakynthos and Kefalonia face the Atlantic westerlies, so they catch far more rain than anywhere in the Aegean. Corfu collects about 1,097 mm a year against Athens’ 414 mm, more than two and a half times as much, and that rain is why the Ionian is green where the Cyclades are bare. Two counterintuitive things follow. Winter nights run cooler than the southern islands: Corfu drops to about 5°C in January against about 9°C on Rhodes. And summer days can run hotter, because with no meltemi to cool them, Corfu averages a 31°C July high, above Crete’s 29°C, and the humidity makes it feel hotter still. It is the westerlies-versus-meltemi contrast that separates this coast from the rest of Greece. More on the Ionian islands and Corfu.

Athens and the mainland: continental extremes

The mainland swings hardest, and it is the baseline the table above uses. Athens averages 33 to 34°C by day in July and August, but the basin traps heat, and in a heatwave the city pushes well past that. The extreme is a matter of record: 48.0°C at Athens and Elefsina on 10 July 1977 stood as the highest temperature ever recorded in continental Europe until Sicily’s 48.8°C in August 2021 took the title. The World Meteorological Organization, which keeps that archive, notes that the Greek reading came from official government sources but was never independently verified by the WMO, and we pass that caveat on rather than round it off. Winters are a real season inland. Thessaloniki averages a 9°C day and near-freezing nights in January, and snow falls across the northern ranges and the interior mountains around Meteora. This zone has the widest annual spread in the country. See Athens for the south of the region and Thessaloniki for the continental north.

Sea temperature by month: when Greece is warm enough to swim

The Aegean runs about a month behind the air. It is at its coldest in late winter rather than midwinter, it peaks in late August and September rather than in July, and it holds its warmth longest in the south, off Crete and Rhodes, well into October.

We print no sea temperatures on this page, and you should know why, because most pages that quote them cannot tell you where they came from. Greece’s own marine research body publishes satellite maps of sea surface temperature, not a monthly climatology table, and the national weather service’s published station record covers the air and not the water. The degree figures circulating for “the Aegean in August” trace back to commercial weather aggregators rather than to a Greek measuring authority. Rather than launder one of those into a table and let two other pages on this site point at it as fact, we give you the pattern, which is the part that actually plans a trip.

That lag is the useful correction most guides skip, and it is physics rather than folklore. Water has an enormous heat capacity compared with air, so it warms slowly through spring and gives that heat back slowly through autumn. In May the air is already summery in Athens while the sea is still bracing, which is why early-June swims disappoint people who packed for hot water. By the time the air starts falling in September, the sea is at its best, warm from a full summer of storage. The Cyclades sit a touch cooler than that through late summer, because the meltemi keeps stirring cooler water up from below; the south, with no such wind, stays warm the longest.

So, can you swim in Greece in October? In the south, comfortably, through most of the month; in the Cyclades and the north, the first half. For where that window stretches longest, head to Crete; for whether the sea should decide your dates at all, the best time to visit Greece guide makes that call.

Greece’s rainy season: when and where it rains

Greece’s rainy season runs roughly November to March, wettest from late autumn into midwinter, with December and January the peak on most stations. June to August are nearly rainless. And the rain is not shared evenly: the Ionian west is soaked while the Cyclades barely register it.

On the Athens baseline, November brings about 58 mm and December about 69 mm, across ten to twelve rainy days each, while the whole summer of June, July and August adds up to just over 20 mm combined, most weeks seeing no rain at all. Athens totals about 414 mm a year.

The regional gap is the real story. Corfu and the Ionian islands collect about 1,097 mm a year, more than two and a half times what falls on Athens, because they take the brunt of the Atlantic westerly systems the Aegean rarely feels. The Cyclades are drier still than Athens. A wet Ionian winter and a bone-dry Cycladic one happen in the same country in the same week.

The shoulders are worth naming plainly. October is the first genuinely wetter month after summer, with Athens jumping from about 14 mm in September to about 53 mm as the autumn storms return. April is the drying-out month on the way up, easing toward the rainless core of summer. None of this is a reason to go or stay away; it is just where and when to expect an umbrella.

Temperature in Greece in November

The temperature in Greece in November runs mild by day and cool at night: about 18 to 20°C daytime highs in Athens and the southern islands, dropping to 10 to 13°C after dark, and cooler in the north, near 15°C by day.

By region, on the national weather service’s November normals: Athens averages an 18°C high and a 10°C low; Heraklion on Crete and Rhodes in the Dodecanese are the warmest, both near 20°C by day and 13°C at night; Corfu sits close to Athens, near 19°C and 10°C. Thessaloniki and the north are the cool outlier, around 15°C by day and 7°C at night, with the first real chill inland.

Two things shape a November trip. It is the start of the wetter season, so rainfall climbs sharply from October and you should pack for showers, and the days are short. The sea is the consolation: it is still giving back the summer’s heat in the first half of the month, and on a grey afternoon it can be warmer than the air, though few would call it swimming weather by late November outside the far south. Whether all of that adds up to a good trip is a separate question, answered on the best time to visit Greece page.

Sunshine, the hottest months and the coldest

Greece runs on a long, bright summer and a short, dim winter. We print no annual sunshine-hour total, for the same reason we print no sea temperature: the national weather service measures sunshine but does not publish those normals anywhere we could open, and the round numbers in circulation come from commercial aggregators. What the rainfall record does establish is the shape. June, July and August are effectively rainless on the Athens baseline, which is another way of saying the sky is clear almost every day; November through January carry rain on ten to thirteen days a month, which is the dim end of the year.

The hottest months are July and August, when the mainland and the Athens basin lead, averaging 33 to 34°C by day, while the meltemi takes the edge off the Cyclades and makes the islands feel more bearable at the same reading. The coldest are January and February: mild enough on the southern coasts, where Crete and Rhodes still see about 15°C by day, but genuinely cold inland and in the north, where Thessaloniki drops to about 1°C at night and the mountains hold snow.

Are the Greek islands hot in October? In the south, yes, through most of the month. Crete and Rhodes hold daytime highs around 23 to 25°C and a sea still warm from summer, while the Cyclades and the north cool and turn showery after mid-month. For packing, that splits the year cleanly: real sun protection from June to September, and a layer for the evening in the shoulder months of April, May, October and November, when a warm afternoon can turn cool the moment the sun drops.

From these numbers to a date

Read together, the averages point the same way most years. Warm days, a warm sea and little rain line up in May and again from September into October: late spring and early autumn, on either side of the hot, crowded, expensive core of July and August. Midsummer maximises heat and guaranteed beach weather; midwinter maximises rain and short days and, on the islands, shut doors.

That is as far as data goes. For how these numbers become a choice given your trip, which ferries run, which islands are open, where the crowds and the meltemi land, go to the best time to visit Greece guide. Data here; decision there. To turn a month into a route, build a Greece itinerary, or start from the travel guide hub. Every figure on this page is a long-run average, last checked in July 2026, not a forecast.

Common questions about Greece’s weather

Are the Greek islands hot in October?

Yes, through most of October, and most of all in the south. Crete and Rhodes hold daytime highs around 23 to 25°C, and the sea is still warm enough to swim, into late October. The Cyclades and the northern islands cool faster and turn showery after mid-month.

When is the rainy season in Greece?

Greece’s rainy season runs roughly November to March, wettest from late autumn into midwinter, with December and January the peak on most stations. June to August are almost rainless. The Ionian west, meaning Corfu, Zakynthos and Kefalonia, is far wetter than the Aegean: Corfu collects more than two and a half times what falls on Athens, and the Cyclades are drier than Athens again.

What is the warmest the sea gets in Greece, and when?

The sea is warmest in late August and September, because water lags the air by about a month, and it is coldest in late winter rather than midwinter. The swimmable window runs roughly June to October, longest off Crete and Rhodes. We give no figure: no Greek marine authority publishes a monthly sea-temperature average we could check, and the numbers you see quoted elsewhere come from commercial weather aggregators.

What is the coldest month in Greece?

January and February are the coldest. The southern coasts stay mild, with Crete and Rhodes near 15°C highs by day, but nights are cold everywhere, and the interior and the north get a real winter: Thessaloniki averages a 9°C day and about 1°C at night in January, and snow settles on the mainland mountains.

What is the hottest month in Greece?

July and August, all but tied. The mainland and the Athens basin are hottest, averaging 33 to 34°C highs and going far higher in a heatwave, while the meltemi wind keeps the dry Cyclades feeling more comfortable at the same reading. The humid, wind-free Ionian feels hotter than its numbers on a still afternoon.

Which Greek islands have the best weather and stay warm longest?

The south, meaning Crete, Rhodes and the rest of the Dodecanese, has the mildest winters, the warmest sea latest into autumn, and among the most sunshine, so it keeps a summer feel longest. The Cyclades are drier and breezier; the Ionian is greener but wetter. Which one suits you is a trip-type question for the best-time guide.

Does it rain in Greece in the summer?

Very little. June to August are the driest months almost everywhere. The Athens baseline sees just over 20 mm across the three combined, on about eight rainy days in total, and Crete is drier still, with only the odd brief shower, mostly over the northern mainland and high ground. Summer in Greece is reliably dry.