Beach Weather by Month

Beach weather by month, from 30 years of daily data

Beach weather by month is the fastest way to decide when to book. This site covers eight beach destinations: Cancun, Cabo San Lucas, Punta Cana, Aruba, Jamaica, Maui, Puerto Vallarta and Orlando. For each one there is a page for every month, showing average highs and lows, rain days, humidity, sea temperature and how many hurricane or tropical storm days were recorded in that month.

Most weather pages give you a single paragraph of averages. We add two things: the numbers come from daily records rather than a rounded chart, and the trip odds tool above turns them into an answer for your actual dates.

How to read the numbers

A rain day here is any day with at least 0.04 inches (about 1 mm) of rain. That is a low bar, so a month with 15 rain days is not a month of storms. Tropical rain often arrives as a short afternoon shower and then clears. Look at both the rain-day count and the monthly rainfall total: 24 rain days at 9.7 inches, as Puerto Vallarta sees in July, is a very different trip from 10 rain days at 2 inches.

Land temperature, rain and humidity use 30 years of daily records, 1996 to 2025. Sea temperature uses a shorter marine record of about four years, so read it as a recent average. Hurricane history is the count of days in each month when a tropical storm or hurricane passed close enough to register, since 1985, within 150 km of the destination. That is a look at the past, not a forecast.

Beach weather by month: what the patterns show

The eight destinations fall into four groups. The Mexican Pacific coast has a sharp split. Cabo San Lucas and Puerto Vallarta are dry from about November to May, then Puerto Vallarta turns very wet: August averages about 27 rain days and 12 inches of rain. Cabo stays far drier all year but its Pacific storm days cluster in August and September.

The western Caribbean, Cancun and Jamaica, is driest in the winter and spring and wettest in early autumn, with September at 23 to 25 rain days. Punta Cana follows a similar shape but peaks a month later. Aruba is the outlier: it is a dry island south of the usual storm track, with April the driest month and the rain arriving in late autumn.

Maui has almost no seasonal swing in air temperature, roughly 72 to 79 degrees highs all year, and rain days that stay between 13 and 18. Its real seasons are whales in winter and warmer water in September. Orlando is inland, with hot, wet summers and a dry, mild autumn and winter.

Choosing a month: rain, heat, sea and storms

Start with what you cannot change. If you cannot handle heat and humidity, the shoulder months matter more than the headline high. If you want to swim, look at sea temperature: Cabo San Lucas water drops to about 71 degrees in February, while the Caribbean stays above 80 all year. If you have a fixed week, use the storm history to decide how flexible your booking should be.

Then trade price against weather. The driest months are usually the most expensive, and the wettest months are cheap for a reason. The months at the edges of the dry season, like early December or late May in Mexico, often give most of the good weather for less. If you already know your month, see the best beach destinations by month.

Hurricane season and beach weather by month

Storm history changes how you should book, not necessarily whether you go. Cancun, Punta Cana, Aruba and Jamaica sit in the Atlantic season, which runs June to November and peaks from August to October. Cabo San Lucas and Puerto Vallarta sit in the eastern Pacific season, which starts in mid-May. In our records Puerto Vallarta logs the most storm days in October and Cabo in August and September. Booking a refundable rate, or insurance that covers named storms, costs little compared with a lost week.

Using the trip odds tool

Pick a destination and your dates in the tool above. It looks at each calendar day in your window across 30 years, and reports the chance of at least one rain day, the expected number of rain days, the average sea temperature and how many storm days fell in that window. A 90 percent chance of at least one rain day sounds alarming, but if the expected count is two short showers in ten days, it does not change your plans. Read the odds as a range, not a promise.

What this site cannot tell you

These are climate averages, not a forecast. Any single year can be much wetter or drier than the average, and hurricane seasons vary widely. Sargassum seaweed on Caribbean beaches is a separate issue we do not forecast. About a week before you travel, check a live forecast, and if you travel in storm season, buy insurance that covers weather cancellation.