Where Is It Warm in August?

Around 180 European destinations qualify, and the sea is finally as warm as the air suggests — the Mediterranean holds its heat into August and September better than it warms in spring, which is why late summer swimming is better than early summer swimming. Palma, Ibiza and Rome sit in the mid-eighties, Tenerife at 84 °F with the Atlantic to temper it.

August is also the month southern Africa becomes interesting for dry heat. Victoria Falls and Lusaka record essentially no rain, sitting inside the range in what is their winter. It is the opposite of the tropical picture, where August is deep monsoon.

August is the driest the Mediterranean gets and among the wettest the Caribbean gets, at almost the same temperature. Santorini averages 79 °F air, 79 °F sea and 1 mm of rain. Montego Bay is 87 °F with an 87 °F sea and 184 mm.

Both are genuinely warm. One is a settled fortnight and the other is a hurricane-season month with afternoon rain built into the average, and only the rainfall column says so.

August rewards waiting. The last week behaves like September on much of southern Europe, with school holidays over across most of the US, while the sea is still at its annual peak. If you can push a trip back a fortnight, late August is one of the better trades in the calendar.

Three things move a fare more than the destination does. Book six to eight weeks ahead for short-haul and two to three months for long-haul or peak season — later than that and you are usually paying for someone else's cancellation. Fly midweek: leisure demand clusters on Friday evenings and Sunday returns, and a Tuesday departure is routinely cheaper for the same trip. And shift your dates before you shop for airlines — a day or two either side of a holiday weekend saves more than any loyalty programme. The low fare calendar shows which days are actually cheapest on our busiest routes.

Every temperature on this page is the average daily high for that destination in that month, measured rather than estimated. The sea and rainfall filters come from the same source. Drag either end of the range to change what counts as warm — the list re-sorts instantly, warmest first.