Discover the best time of year, based on historical climate, temperature, and precipitation.
The best weather in Boa Vista is from January, March, April. — consistent weather climate
🌡Hot & dry
| Score | 98 | 96 | 98 | 98 | 98 | 98 | 92 | 61 | 55 | 72 | 94 | 98 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Climate | Pleasant | Pleasant | Pleasant | Pleasant | Pleasant | Pleasant | Pleasant | Hot & dry | Hot & dry | Hot & dry | Pleasant | Pleasant |
| Temperature | 19–26°C | 19–25°C | 19–25°C | 19–26°C | 20–26°C | 21–28°C | 22–29°C | 24–30°C | 24–30°C | 24–30°C | 22–29°C | 21–27°C |
| Feels like | 19–25°C | 18–24°C | 18–25°C | 19–26°C | 20–27°C | 22–29°C | 24–32°C | 27–34°C | 28–34°C | 27–33°C | 24–30°C | 21–26°C |
| Precipitation | 2mm 0 days | 14mm 1 days | 1mm 0 days | 1mm 0 days | 2mm 0 days | 5mm 1 days | 10mm 2 days | 41mm 9 days | 57mm 9 days | 19mm 3 days | 3mm 1 days | 3mm 1 days |
| Sunshine | 9.9h ☀︎ 87% | 10.2h ☀︎ 88% | 10.9h ☀︎ 90% | 11.3h ☀︎ 91% | 11.7h ☀︎ 91% | 11.7h ☀︎ 89% | 10.9h ☀︎ 84% | 10.3h ☀︎ 82% | 10.2h ☀︎ 84% | 10.5h ☀︎ 90% | 10.0h ☀︎ 88% | 10.2h ☀︎ 91% |
| Wind | NE · 25 km/h | NE · 26 km/h | NE · 26 km/h | NE · 25 km/h | N · 24 km/h | N · 23 km/h | N · 18 km/h | NE · 18 km/h | NE · 20 km/h | NE · 21 km/h | NE · 22 km/h | NE · 24 km/h |
| Humidity (%) | 69% | 70% | 71% | 72% | 74% | 76% | 75% | 76% | 78% | 76% | 73% | 70% |
| Day length | 11.3h | 11.6h | 12.1h | 12.5h | 12.9h | 13.1h | 13.0h | 12.7h | 12.2h | 11.8h | 11.4h | 11.2h |
From June through October, thousands of loggerhead turtles come ashore on Boa Vista's beaches at night to lay their eggs…
Standard travel wisdom sends everyone to Boa Vista in midwinter, but May delivers identical golden weather with a fraction of the charter crowds.
Lying just 450 kilometres off the coast of Senegal, Boa Vista is Africa pulled out into the Atlantic: a terrain of wind-sculpted sand dunes, silent lunar plains, and oceanic beaches that run on for miles without a footprint. Most travellers board planes here in January or February, escaping European grey to sit under the Sahara-blown trade winds. They get warmth, certainly, but they also get packed beachfronts in Sal Rei, winds that can sting your shins with whipped sand, and an island operating at full throttle. The secret of this island is that the winter high season is an accident of European school calendars, not atmospheric reality. If you wait until May, the island exhales, the sea turns to glass, the sun blazes unbroken for nearly twelve hours a day, and the Sahara feels like your private sanctuary.
If you ask a hotel operator when to visit Boa Vista, they will tell you January. If you ask the ocean, it will tell you May. By late spring, the fierce harmattan winds that blast across from the African mainland have smoothed into a balmy, reliable breeze. The ocean relaxes its temper. At Praia de Chaves, where winter surf pounds the shorebreak with intimidating power, the water settles into rolling turquoise rollers suitable for swimming rather than mere survival.
May is the statistical masterclass of the Cape Verdean year. The daily high sits comfortably around 26 degrees Celsius, but the apparent heat rises just enough to make barefoot wanderings through Sal Rei genuinely luxurious. The sunlight is relentless—nearly twelve hours of sheer brightness every single day—yet the humidity remains so low that you never feel weighed down. Most importantly, the crowds have vanished. The winter package flights drop off steeply after April, leaving the beach shacks sleepy and the expansive sands of Praia de Santa Mónica completely unpeopled.
June continues this miraculous run with a tiny uptick in warmth and the magical arrival of the island’s most famous visitors. Toward the end of the month, the first loggerhead turtles begin hauling themselves up onto the southern beaches under the cover of darkness. You get the front end of turtle season before the late-summer rains arrive, enjoying pristine dune landscapes under an immaculate sky without competing for elbow room.
By July, the atmosphere shifts. The crisp ocean breeze softens into something far more humid and still. August and September bring the Cape Verdean rainy season—a concept that sounds dramatic for a desert island, but means heavy, tropical cloudbursts that roll through, soaking the volcanic stone and turning the dust to slick clay before the sun returns.
This is the island at its most physically demanding. When the afternoon sun beats down after a storm, the humidity pushes the perceived temperature past 34 degrees Celsius. The interior of the island, especially near the white dunes of Deserto de Viana, becomes an oven where midday walks are punishing. If you come purely for crisp beach lounging and effortless hiking, September will test your patience with sticky afternoons and murky, agitated seas.
Yet this sultry stretch belongs to the Loggerhead Turtle Nesting Season. From July through October, thousands of loggerhead turtles clamber onto the beaches of the south and east coasts to deposit their clutches in the sand. Night excursions led by local guides take you across the beaches under ink-black skies, watching prehistoric creatures heave their way out of the foam. By October, early nests begin to hatch, offering the rare spectacle of tiny hatchlings scurrying into the surf while massive females are still coming ashore to lay. It is a profound wildlife encounter, but you must accept damp heat, occasional mosquitoes, and moody skies to experience it.
Come November, the rains are gone and the Atlantic winter begins. By December and January, northern European travellers arrive en masse. The island buzzes with energy, the town square in Sal Rei fills with the sound of live morna music drifting from open-air courtyards, and every four-wheel-drive excursion across the dunes is booked days in advance.
What the travel brochures rarely describe with honesty is the wind. The northeast trades blow hard and fast all through winter. For windsurfers, kiteboarders, and wave-riders, this is absolute nirvana. The ocean develops massive swell, and the shoreline hums with kinetic power. But for a sunbather looking to read a book on Praia de Chaves, the wind can be aggressive, turning the golden beach into a sandblaster and churning up enough red dust from the desert to blur the horizon.
Evenings in January and February require a light sweater, as the wind off the Atlantic brings the apparent temperature down to a crisp 24 degrees Celsius. It is lovely weather for quad biking through the interior or exploring the ruins around the coast, but it is not the balmy, languid tropical paradise many expect when they pack exclusively for heat.
Spring on Boa Vista is the transitional bridge where the wild winter trades begin to lose their edge. In March, the winds take their first noticeable step down, though the ocean remains lively and cool. By April, the days lengthen noticeably, the sea warms up by a degree or two, and the constant blowing that defines the winter months settles into a gentle, cooling marine draft.
April serves as the shoulder season’s great opening act. The heavy winter crowds begin to thin out significantly, opening up vast stretches of empty shoreline along Praia de Santa Mónica. You can drive for forty minutes along desert tracks, step over the low crest of sand, and find fifteen kilometres of pale shore with not another soul in view.
Rain is essentially non-existent in this period—rarely amounting to more than a trace drizzle over the entire month. For anyone whose holiday depends on dependable dry warmth, clear horizons free of Saharan dust haze, and seas that have stopped churning into foam, this early spring window offers nearly all the perks of peak winter with far less noise and grit.