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Greek temples, baroque towns and an active volcano — the Mediterranean's largest island, and one of its hottest in high summer. Daytime highs in Sicily run from about 13 °C in January to 30 °C in July, an annual range of roughly 17 °C.
Measured against a beach trip, the conditions hold up June to September. June is the most consistent single month: highs near 27 °C, nights around 18 °C, and roughly 19 mm of rain across the month.
What rules months out here is temperature and rainfall, not any composite judgement. Rainfall is sharply seasonal: October averages 93 mm against 7 mm in July, so the wet season is the real planning constraint rather than heat or cold. January is the weakest month on these criteria.
Visitor numbers follow their own curve. Recorded overnight stays peak in the two weeks from 13 August at about 2.2 times an average fortnight for this region, against 0.3 times in January. June, the most consistent month on the weather, is also near the top of that curve at 1.5 times average, so the two answers pull against each other. On the separate question of how much tourism the area carries all year, Palermo sits in the 177th densest of 294 European regions, at 3.6 overnight stays per resident a year.
May sits just outside the window, with part of the month working and part not. These are usually the interesting weeks: conditions are close to the peak-season answer while prices and crowds are not. On recorded overnight stays that holds: May runs about 44% below the August peak. The map lets you check them fortnight by fortnight rather than trusting a monthly average.
What Sicily is known for
- Agrigento's Valley of the Temples holds some of the best-preserved Doric temples anywhere, better than most in Greece
- Etna is Europe's most active volcano at around 3,350 m and can be climbed to the summit craters
- The Baroque towns of the Val di Noto were rebuilt after the 1693 earthquake and are a UNESCO site
- Palermo's street food and its markets are a Norman-Arab-Byzantine inheritance
Month by month
| Month | High °C | Low °C | Precip mm | Wet days |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| January | 13 | 7 | 79 | 11.1 |
| February | 13 | 7 | 74 | 10.1 |
| March | 15 | 8 | 70 | 10.3 |
| April | 18 | 10 | 50 | 8.6 |
| May | 22 | 14 | 37 | 5.9 |
| June | 27 | 18 | 19 | 3.3 |
| July | 30 | 21 | 7 | 1.6 |
| August | 30 | 21 | 23 | 3.5 |
| September | 26 | 19 | 62 | 8.3 |
| October | 22 | 16 | 93 | 10.6 |
| November | 18 | 12 | 88 | 11.2 |
| December | 14 | 9 | 81 | 11.0 |
Ticked rows are months where every hard requirement for a beach trip is met across at least half the month.
Open Sicily on the map →
Nearby regions
Figures are 30-year climatology sampled at Palermo, Catania, Taormina, Siracusa and Agrigento, averaged across those locations, from ERA5-Land reanalysis fitted with a harmonic seasonal cycle and a trend term, evaluated for 2026. Sampling named towns rather than averaging the whole region avoids blending valley and mountain conditions into a figure true of neither. Cells are about 0.08° wide, from ERA5-Land's 0.1° grid, which is itself driven by a 0.25° (~28 km) atmospheric reanalysis — so individual valleys, sheltered bays and single summits are not resolved. In steep terrain read these as conditions for the wider area rather than for one village. They describe typical conditions, not a forecast. Read how the climatology is built.