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Photo by Julius (User:Juliux), CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
Manchester in May
sweet spot · the best month to go · the sunniest month of the year
The year in Manchester
Tap a month for its page
- JanJManchester in January: avoid
- FebFManchester in February: avoid
- MarMManchester in March: ok
- AprAManchester in April: sweet spot
- MayMManchester in May: sweet spot
- JunJManchester in June: sweet spot
- JulJManchester in July: ok, busy
- AugAManchester in August: ok
- SepSManchester in September: ok
- OctOManchester in October: ok
- NovNManchester in November: avoid
- DecDManchester in December: avoid
- Sweet spot
- Good
- OK
- Avoid
- Busy
Plan this trip
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Travel insurance
Check whether your bank card or home insurance already covers this trip.
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Mobile data (eSIM)
Your own plan's EU roaming may already cover this.
Renting a pocket Wi-Fi is the other common way to stay connected.
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The numbers
| Daily high | 17°C |
|---|---|
| Nightly low | 8°C |
| Feels like, afternoon | 15°C |
| Rainy days, 1 mm or more | 11 · 72 mm |
| Humidity | 73% |
| Sunshine | 10.5 h/day |
| Daylight | 15.9 h/day |
| Crowds | 96 / 100, higher is quieter |
Ten-year averages for this calendar month. A rainy day is one with at least 1 mm of rain, as a weather station counts it. The model these figures come from drizzles more than a rain gauge, the more so the warmer the month, so its days count from 2 mm, rising to 5 mm in the hottest.
Weather read at the city centre, 15 km from the airport (MAN): ten years of ERA5 and ERA5-Land reanalysis, through Open-Meteo's open data.
How busy it gets
Public holidays in May
Holidays crowd a place out and push fares up around them; they count toward the crowd score above.
Manchester in pictures
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Rodhullandemu, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
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Mike Peel (www.mikepeel.net)., CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
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Mike Peel (www.mikepeel.net)., CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
What to pack
- Warm layers for the evenings, which drop to about 8°C.
- A packable rain jacket for the 11 or so rainy days.
- Sun protection: about 10 hours of sunshine a day.
Each line is a threshold over the ten-year figures above, not advice from anywhere else.
Before you go
Type G plugs at 230 V. Drives on the left. The currency is the Pound sterling. Everything for United Kingdom: cost of living, languages, emergency numbers and health.
On arrival in Manchester: the apps, paying, getting around, tipping and the emergency numbers.
May elsewhere
In May from
The other months at Manchester
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