Best time to visit Croatia

Best months: June, July and May
Year: 2001-2020
Spread between cities: 26 (in January)

The answer for Croatia is computed across 3 measured cities, and there June, July and May come out best on the twenty year normals for 2001-2020. That is an average of real places rather than a figure for the country as a whole, because no such figure exists.

All 3 cities put June among their own best months, so this is one of the rare countries where the answer holds wherever you go.

The widest disagreement is in January, where the measured cities sit 26 points apart: Split scores best and Zagreb worst in the same month. A single best time for Croatia hides that gap, and for part of the country it would be the wrong answer.

The numbers behind that: June averages 21.6 degrees across the measured cities, from Zagreb at 20.3 to Dubrovnik at 22.5, and brings about 65 mm of rain.

The months to avoid are January and December, and what decides it is the cold.

Each month is scored on its mean temperature, its rainfall and its humidity, taken from the provider twenty year normals for 2001-2020. The cities are Zagreb, Split and Dubrovnik. The comfort bands and the penalties are fixed and published, so a reader who disagrees with the ranking can see exactly which part of it they disagree with.

The source publishes a monthly mean and, separately, the highest and lowest values it recorded in twenty years. Those extremes are not a typical afternoon or a typical night, so nothing here is quoted as one. This page does not say what the daytime high usually is, because this source cannot say it.

Normals are not a forecast. They describe what twenty years averaged to, and any single year can sit well outside them. They also describe a model grid cell of roughly fifty kilometres rather than a weather station, so a coastal city and the sea beside it share one figure.