Tuscany month by month, at a glance
Hover each month for the summary. Click to pin it.
In Siena the driest month of the year is July, with 29 millimetres over 3.4 rain days. It is also, with August, the hottest: a mean daily maximum of 30.5 degrees. And the month when the Tuscan countryside does what made it famous — picking grapes, gathering olives, milling — is November, which at 125 millimetres over ten days is the wettest of the twelve. That contradiction is the whole decision.
01 Eighty-four rain days a year
The figures are the 1991-2020 series for Siena, at 322 metres, which serves well as a reference for the inland hills of Tuscany. The annual total is 823 millimetres over 84.2 days with precipitation. Fewer than one day in four.
It is a textbook Mediterranean regime: the rain is not spread out, it is concentrated. Between September and December 389 millimetres fall, almost half the year, over 33.6 days. Between June and August, 120 millimetres over 13.2 days. Water and heat run in opposite directions, and that is the problem to solve when picking dates.
02 Summer: 29 millimetres and 30.5 degrees
July and August are near-dry — 29 and 39 millimetres — and near-identical to each other: mean maxima of 30.5 and 30.7, with minima of 17.7 and 18.0. In the Crete and the Orcia valley, with no shade and pale clay throwing the light back, it feels considerably worse than the number.
On top of that, this is when everyone arrives. Tuscany is Italy's second region for tourist arrivals, and around 40 per cent of them go to the coast, so the shoreline and the roads leading to it saturate. And on 15 August, with the Italian holidays at their peak, many small inland businesses close precisely when there are most people about.
Summer works if the plan involves a pool and going out early and late. It does not work if the plan is to walk, drive slowly and stop in villages: between one and five in the afternoon there is nothing to do outdoors.
03 The countryside works when the rain comes back
The grape harvest comes in September. The olive harvest starts in the first half of October and runs to the end of November, with the technical advice not to go past 30 November. In those weeks the mills are running and the olio nuovo appears: freshly pressed oil, cloudy and markedly peppery in the throat, a strictly seasonal product that does not exist in March.
And this is where the agricultural calendar collides with the meteorological one. September brings 81 millimetres over 6.7 days; October 106 over 8.1; November 125 over 10. The three months in which the region does what defines it are the three months when it rains most. There is no way to have both.
Key moments at a glance
25.0 °C daily maximum, 81 mm over 6.7 days and the harvest under way.
19.8 °C and the mills open, in exchange for 106 mm over 8.1 days.
29 mm over 3.4 days, but 30.5 °C and the countryside idle until evening.
125 mm over 10 days, the year's peak, with the olive harvest finishing.
04 September solves nearly everything
If one month has to be chosen it is September, by clear margins. The mean maximum drops to 25.0 degrees and the minimum to 14.4, which is dinner-outdoors temperature without sweating. It rains 81 millimetres over 6.7 days, less than October and considerably less than November. The grape harvest is under way, so the wineries are working and it shows. And August's pressure falls away after the first week.
October is the second option and has an argument September does not: the new oil. The price is 106 millimetres of rain, four and a half degrees less on the maximum and noticeably shorter days. Come for the table and go in October; come for the landscape and the driving and go in September.
05 Two dates worth checking before booking
The Palio of Siena is run twice a year, on 2 July and 16 August, in the Piazza del Campo. They are two specific days that fill the city and its whole province, with prices and room availability altered across the area in the days beforehand. Decide deliberately: either go for it, or avoid those dates.
The other is 15 August. It is not a local event but the axis of the Italian holidays, and it drags the week before and the week after with it. Booking in those two weeks costs more and offers less.
06 Winter, with adjusted expectations
January gives 9.8 degrees maximum and 3.1 minimum, with 53 millimetres over 7 days: it is, oddly, drier than May. Fog settles in the valleys in the morning and the hills float above it, which is the least photographed and one of the best sights of the year.
The catch is about services, not climate. Many agriturismos, mills and village restaurants close or cut their hours between November and March, and small villages are left with nowhere to eat. In winter, rural Tuscany asks you to check what is open beforehand; the cities do not.
07 The honest summary
September ahead of everything, and within September, from the 5th onwards. October if the trip is about eating and drinking. May as a third option, with 70 millimetres over 8.2 days and 22.7 degrees, still green and without the summer crowds.
And the warning that actually matters: here the driest month is the worst month to be outdoors at midday, and the wettest is the one in which the landscape you came to see is genuinely at work. Choosing dates in Tuscany means choosing which of the two you would rather lose.
