Nashville month by month, at a glance
Hover each month for the summary. Click to pin it.
Almost every guide to this city talks about four clearly marked seasons. That is true for temperature and false for rain: there is no dry stretch here to aim at in the calendar. The driest month of the year gets 86 millimetres, which in many destinations would count as a wet month.
01 No month gets off
The airport's climate normals for 1991–2020 spread the rain strikingly evenly. May is the maximum at 127 millimetres and October the minimum at 86. Between the wettest and the driest month there are about 41 millimetres: in practice, the difference between one month and another is two or three days of rain.
Compare that with a genuine dry-season climate, where the weak month can sit at 10 or 20 millimetres and the strong one exceed 300. Here the annual curve is almost flat: between 86 and 127, always.
The practical consequence is simple and unromantic: you are not going to dodge the rain by picking the right month. You will dodge it by watching the three-day forecast and carrying a light waterproof at any time of year.
Key moments at a glance
86 mm of rain and an average high of 23 degrees.
From 32 degrees in August to 29 in September and 23 in October.
Pleasant temperatures, but the year's most active month for severe storms.
Highs of 33 degrees and average lows of 22.
02 So the thermometer decides the date
What does move a great deal is the temperature. The average high goes from 9 degrees in January to 33 in July: twenty-four degrees of travel inside the same year. That is a genuinely continental range, not the gentle variation of a coastal city.
In January the average low sits just below zero and in July it stays at 22 degrees. That second number matters more than it looks: it means that in high summer the night does not cool down, and the afternoon mugginess drags on until dawn.
The records on file give the measure of the place: 27 degrees below zero on 21 January 1985 and 43 degrees on 29 June 2012. They are rare cases, but not anecdotes from another climate: they belong to this one.
Rain spreads almost evenly across the twelve months. What really changes is twenty-four degrees of average high between January and July.
03 Spring is the storm season
From March to May the city is in Middle Tennessee's severe storm season, and April is historically the region's peak tornado month. That does not make spring a forbidden period — these are localised events lasting a few hours — but it does mean travelling with weather alerts switched on.
The other face of spring is water. On 1 and 2 May 2010, 345 millimetres fell on the city in forty-eight hours, more than double the previous two-day record of 170 millimetres, set in September 1979. The Cumberland reached 15.81 metres, a level not seen since 1937.
An episode like that does not repeat every year, but it explains why May is the wettest month in the series: spring water does not arrive as drizzle, it arrives concentrated into a few hours.
04 Autumn is the window
If you have to pick two months, they are September and October. The average high falls from 32 degrees in August to 29 in September and 23 in October, and in that same stretch rain touches its yearly minimum. It is the only combination in the year where both variables work in your favour at once.
October also falls outside the spring severe-storm season and is still a long way from freezing nights. November remains comfortable by day, with highs of 16 degrees, but the average low drops to 4 and the afternoons shorten quickly.
September has an added advantage for anyone coming for the music: the temperature already allows being outside at night without July's mugginess, which is when downtown turns uncomfortable from mid-afternoon onwards.
05 What to pack
In any month: a light waterproof and shoes that survive a wet afternoon. That is not a seasonal precaution, it is the consequence of that 86-millimetre monthly floor.
From June to September, light clothes and a long-sleeved layer for indoors, where the air conditioning runs hard. From December to February, a real coat: lows hover around zero and snow, though scarce — some 12 centimetres a year on average — sometimes arrives all at once: on 22 January 2016, 20 centimetres fell in a single storm.
In short: September and October are the best bet, April and May pay off if you accept watching the sky, and July and August only make sense if humid heat does not bother you. Whatever you choose, though, the umbrella travels with you.
