Weather Overview

Tropical sun and sea

Recife and the North-East region of Brazil is tropical, hot and sunny, in fact around 2700 hours per year and an average temperature of 26ºC.

Recife lies on the eastern tip of South America and enjoys long hot (28-34ºC) summers (November  - April) with early evening showers and high (but not excessive) humidity and slightly cooler (20-28ºC) winters (May - September) with a rainy season normally May to August.  

Most of the year, there is a cooling sea-breeze and this increases to moderate during the winter and rainy seasons. The exact start and finish of these seasons has become a little less predictable over recent decades, due to climatic phenomena such as El Ninho. 

The sun shines year round and the coldest temperature is around 12 ºC in the hills inland (something most Brazilians from further south find hard to believe and the locals think is extremely cold!). Freak weather is unknown with moderate winds, heavy rains concentrated in the winter months and warm seas.

What to Bring

Consequently, your packing can be cut back  to T-shirts, shorts, beachwear, hats, sunglasses, flip-flops (buy the latest designs at the airport or shopping centres - see Things To Do section) and comfortable walking shoes for sightseeing.  If you were to come in winter, a light pullover, sweatshirt and a foldable umbrella come in useful should you be out in heavy rain or cooler evenings.

The most important thing you must pack or buy on arrival is your favourite sun-block, preferably factor 30 or above - Recife is just 8-9º South of the Equator.  Put this on before you go out. Trust us - if you are not used to sun, you can get burnt very easily which can spoil the early days of your holiday.

Below is a statistical chart of the main climatic data followed by a drop-down menu of regions covered by My Guide Recife which give you the current and 5-day weather forecast, which is updated automatically:


Recife Climate graph contributed by climatemps.com

Talking about the weather

We sometimes joke, if we ever see a hurricance, cyclone or it snows in Recife, we will have most definitely caused irreparable climate change to our planet! Equally, we can assure that there are no records of noticeable earthquakes nor tidal waves in this part of the world.

The weather is rarely a front-page story nor a conversation opener in a bank queue - if you are looking for challenging or cold weather, here is not for you. 

Though the locals do like to complain how hot it is today or if in mid-winter it drops below 20ºC (which is rarely the case). And being the tropics, when it rains it can really mean it, possibly to get it over quickly to not spoil the whole day on the beach.

Some phrases you might hear from visitors:

- "Even the rain here is warm"

- "These natural swimming pools are like a sauna"

And from locals:

- "What a cold winter morning - it went below 20ºC"

- "I'm going on holiday to US/Canada/Europe to experience cold weather and see snow for the first time".