1. Sal — Cape Verde
Score 100.0Day26.3 °CNight21.5 °CRainy days1
Where to go in May
In May the scoring saturates completely: twelve entries at 100, and several more would join them if the list ran longer. The Mediterranean is back — Barcelona, Madrid, Mallorca, Corsica, Athens, Crete, Santorini — with Sicily and the Lebanese coast joining them. When the weather column stops separating places, everything else decides. Beirut is worth 394 on our index, Corsica 1,000: there lies the real gap. Two practical remarks. The air is ready long before the water, so May is for walking, cycling and eating outdoors rather than swimming. And the calendar is kind: no school holidays anywhere, fares still priced as low season for most of the month, the long weekends the only bottlenecks. The winter stars have already gone, driven off by their own heat.
The ranking for May
Three of them in detail
Sicily — Italy
Sicily opens its good season at 24.2 °C by day and 16 °C at night, two days above 1 mm for 16.6 mm. The island's year counts 80 rainy days, nearly all of them outside this window. At 972 on our index it sits just under French prices, and the season runs to October.
Madrid — Spain
Madrid reads 24.4 °C by day and 12.3 °C at night, five days of rain for 42.5 mm: May is wet by local standards, within a year counting 62 such days. That is the price paid in a city whose hottest month is July. The airport lies 12 km out.
Crete — Greece
Crete gives 23.8 °C in the afternoon, 16.3 °C at night and five days above 1 mm. The island registers 49 rainy days across a whole year, and its good season starts here and runs to November. Heraklion's airport is 3 km from the town itself.
What to avoid this month
Rain, not cold, structures the list. Bled takes 20 days above 1 mm and 215 mm, the Alpine spring at its worst. Kerala is under the monsoon, 29 days of rain and 542.3 mm; the Gulf of Guinea follows, Lagos on 22 days and Abidjan on 21. Reykjavik keeps its 18.
How the score is calculated
One formula, applied identically to the hundred places, on measured station records:
score = 100 − 3·max(0, |tMax − 25| − 3) − 4·max(0, rainyDays1 − 6) − 2·max(0, 12 − tMin)A place is flagged as one to avoid when it records 14 rainy days or more in the month, an average high of 34 °C or more, or an average high of 8 °C or less. Only the five lowest-scoring flagged places are listed.
Updated on 21 September 2026