Madeira weather month by month, at three different stations

Rainfall, month by month, at three stations

Every figure is the 1991 to 2020 normal. Funchal comes from IPMA’s published normals sheet. Santana and Chão do Areeiro are recovered from IPMA’s monthly regional bulletins, which is the only place they are stated at all.

The two right-hand columns stop after July. That is not an oversight, and the next section explains exactly why.

Why August to December are blank

IPMA publishes standalone climate-normal fact sheets for 2*, source: IPMA, The published 1991–2020 normals sheets, nationally, read August 28, 2026 stations in the entire Madeira archipelago: Funchal and Porto Santo. That was checked across all three published normal periods. There is no published normals sheet for any north-coast or mountain station.

The only place those stations’ normals appear is inside the monthly Boletim Climatológico da Região Autónoma da Madeira, which states each month’s observation together with its anomaly against the 1991 to 2020 normal. Subtract the anomaly from the observation and the normal falls out.

That bulletin is a new series. It begins with the January 2026 edition, IPMA’s publications index holds exactly seven of them, and the July edition was published in August 2026. The August edition did not exist when these figures were read on 26 August 2026.

So August through December for Santana and Chão do Areeiro are not published anywhere. They are left blank rather than filled in from a secondary source, because a rainfall figure that cannot be clicked through to IPMA is worth nothing on a page like this. Every English-language competitor prints twelve months for the north coast. None of them can say where the last five came from.

How the north-coast and mountain figures were derived

The method is arithmetic on IPMA’s own statements: normal equals observation minus anomaly. Where a bulletin states a normal outright, the stated value was used in preference to the arithmetic.

How it was checked

The method was run 21*, source: IPMA, 1991–2020 normal, read August 26, 2026 times against the two stations where IPMA does publish a normals sheet. For every month extracted, a Funchal or Porto Santo value was re-derived from the same bulletin by the identical method and compared against the published sheet. All of them matched.

As a second check, in thirteen of fourteen station-months the derived mean temperature equals the midpoint of the derived maximum and minimum to within a twentieth of a degree. The exception is Santana in February, where the derived mean is 13.1 °C*, source: IPMA, 1991–2020 normal, read August 26, 2026 against a midpoint a quarter of a degree higher. That reflects IPMA’s own figures rather than an extraction error, and it is carried at medium confidence rather than quietly rounded away.

What IPMA says about its own series

IPMA notes in the bulletins that the Chão do Areeiro series uses WRF-modelled data for 1995 to 2002 for precipitation and mean temperature, and that the Santana series uses WRF-modelled mean temperature for 2005 to 2010.

These normals are therefore partly model-derived at source. That is almost certainly why IPMA publishes no normals fact sheet for either station, and it belongs on the page rather than in a footnote: the north-coast and mountain figures here are the best published figures that exist, not measurements of the same standing as the Funchal sheet.

The three climates, in plain terms

Funchal and the south

An annual mean daily maximum of 22.9 °C*, source: IPMA, 1991–2020, read August 26, 2026, 574.3 mm*, source: IPMA, 1991–2020, read August 26, 2026 of rain a year, and 104.1*, source: IPMA, 1991–2020, read August 26, 2026 days a year above twenty-five degrees. July rainfall is 1.7 mm*, source: IPMA, 1991–2020, read August 26, 2026, which is effectively nothing at all.

Santana and the north

Cooler by day in every month IPMA publishes: 16.1 °C*, source: IPMA, 1991–2020 normal, read August 26, 2026 in January against Funchal’s 20.0 °C*, source: IPMA, 1991–2020, read August 26, 2026, 16.7 °C*, source: IPMA, 1991–2020 normal, read August 26, 2026 in March against 20.6 °C*, source: IPMA, 1991–2020, read August 26, 2026, and 22.0 °C*, source: IPMA, 1991–2020 normal, read August 26, 2026 in July against 25.4 °C*, source: IPMA, 1991–2020, read August 26, 2026. Much wetter: 106.9 mm*, source: IPMA, 1991–2020 normal, read August 26, 2026 in January against Funchal’s 67.1 mm*, source: IPMA, 1991–2020, read August 26, 2026. In July, when Funchal records 1.7 mm*, source: IPMA, 1991–2020, read August 26, 2026, Santana still records 25.8 mm*, source: IPMA, 1991–2020 normal, read August 26, 2026, which is 15.18 times*, source: IPMA, 1991–2020 normal, read August 26, 2026 as much. The station sits at roughly 380 m*, source: IPMA, 1991–2020 normal, read August 26, 2026.

Chão do Areeiro and the mountains

At roughly 1,590 m*, source: IPMA, 1991–2020 normal, read August 26, 2026 the mountain station runs between six and a third and eleven and a third degrees cooler than Funchal by day, across the seven months IPMA publishes. Its January mean daily maximum is 8.7 °C*, source: IPMA, 1991–2020 normal, read August 26, 2026. Its March rainfall is 252.8 mm*, source: IPMA, 1991–2020 normal, read August 26, 2026 against Funchal’s 62.3 mm*, source: IPMA, 1991–2020, read August 26, 2026, and its March mean daily maximum is 9.7 °C*, source: IPMA, 1991–2020 normal, read August 26, 2026. Its warmest month is not warm: the July mean daily maximum up there, 19.1 °C*, source: IPMA, 1991–2020 normal, read August 26, 2026, is lower than Funchal’s in January.

Porto Santo

A separate island with a separate climate: an annual mean of 19.1 °C*, source: IPMA, 1991–2020, read August 26, 2026 and annual rainfall of 381.7 mm*, source: IPMA, 1991–2020, read August 26, 2026, against Funchal’s 574.3 mm*, source: IPMA, 1991–2020, read August 26, 2026. It is drier than Funchal over the year and in every month from September to May. In June, July and August the order reverses, on almost no rain either way — Funchal records 7.8 mm*, source: IPMA, 1991–2020, read August 26, 2026, 1.7 mm*, source: IPMA, 1991–2020, read August 26, 2026 and 1.3 mm*, source: IPMA, 1991–2020, read August 26, 2026 in those three months. That is why Porto Santo has the beach and Madeira has the forest.

What is deliberately missing

Sea temperature by month. No IPMA sea-surface temperature normals series for Madeira could be located, so there is no monthly sea series on this page. The only figure on any official page is one sentence from Porto Santo Line describing the sea at Porto Santo, and an operator’s sentence is not a twelve-month series.

Every competitor publishes a sea-temperature table. None of them cites a source for it. The gap here is the honest version of the same information.

What this means for planning a walk

Funchal weather does not predict a trailhead. A dry morning at 20.0 °C*, source: IPMA, 1991–2020, read August 26, 2026 on the seafront can coincide with 8.7 °C*, source: IPMA, 1991–2020 normal, read August 26, 2026 and rain on the ridge, where January rainfall runs more than three times Funchal’s. The north coast has its own, smaller ratio: 1.97 times*, source: IPMA, The Funchal half of the ratio; the Santana half is summed from the monthly Boletins, read August 28, 2026 Funchal’s across January to July.

The practical shape of that is the ten-day route, which groups days by geography so the call is made from the window rather than after an hour in the car, and the individual entries under things to do, each of which carries its own season note and its own caveat. The permit regime that now governs every classified trail is set out in the guide to the levada walks, and the case for coming in February rather than August is in the winter guide.