Weather in Mallorca: the next 7 days

1The week in Palma de Mallorca at a glance

One card covers one day, counted in Mallorca local time. The first card is called Today and only covers the remaining hours, so its high and its low can differ from the rest of the week. The other cards show the weekday and the date.

Below the cards, the same week follows as a table. It adds a column the cards lack: the wind, shown as the strongest forecast mean wind of the day in km/h. All values come from MET Norway and apply to one point in Palma.

2How to read the day cards for Mallorca

• Symbol and text: They describe the daytime hours, not the night. If a sun symbol still comes with an amount of rain, the rain falls at another time of day.
• Two temperatures: The bold figure is the high, the second one the low of the day, both in degrees Celsius.
• Rain in millimetres: This is the total amount of precipitation the model expects over the day. MET Norway describes the value as the expected amount for the period. So the figure tells you how much rain the model calculates, not how certain it is to come.

AEMET, on the other hand, shows a probability of precipitation in per cent in its forecast for Palma. Anyone who opens both side by side is therefore comparing two different measures.

3Beach days in Mallorca: check rain, wind and warmth

Whether a day suits the beach in Mallorca depends mainly on three values. This page sets no fixed limit. The figures come from the sources below, and the conclusions drawn from them are this page's own reading.

• Rain: The climate statistics on this site count a day with 1 mm of precipitation or more as a rain day. If the expected daily amount stays below that, a dry beach day is more likely. A thunder symbol is a clearer warning for the beach and for boats than the amount.
• Wind: AEMET's Beaufort scale puts 20 to 28 km/h at force 4 and describes small, growing waves with frequent whitecaps on the open sea. At force 5, 29 to 38 km/h, it describes moderate, longer waves, and at force 6, 39 to 49 km/h, large waves with white foam crests. How much of that reaches a cove depends on the wind direction, which is not in the table.
• Warmth: Whether the high is warm enough for swimming also depends on the sea. The values by month are under sea temperature.

For waves and water temperature at individual beaches, AEMET also publishes a separate beach forecast that covers the Balearic Islands.

4Hiking days in Mallorca: reading the week

The week is calculated for the coast at Palma. For the Serra de Tramuntana the values are only a guide. MET Norway itself points out in its documentation that, at a resolution of around 9 km, wind forecasts should be used with care in areas with complex topography. A calm day in Palma can look different on a ridge.

• Dry days first: Days without a rain symbol and with a small daily amount suit long routes best.
• Avoid the heat: In warm weeks, the days with the lowest high are the better hiking days. In hot spells it is worth checking the AEMET warnings.
• Thunderstorms: If a card shows a thunder symbol, that day does not belong on a summit.

If the weather fits, plan the most important route for one of the first days of the week. Their values are more reliable than those at the end of the week.

5Why 7 days is a good horizon for Mallorca

According to the European centre ECMWF, every forecast loses quality for two reasons the further ahead it reaches: the starting state of the atmosphere is never known exactly, and a model has to simplify the real atmosphere. The errors from both build up.

Within a week, the values for Mallorca stay concrete enough to weigh one day against another. For the first days MET Norway supplies a value for every hour, later only in blocks of six hours. AEMET also issues its forecast for the municipality of Palma over 7 days and states that it should be read as the most likely trend of the weather.

Days 8 to 10 are on the page Mallorca 10-day weather. Anything beyond day 10 is no longer a forecast but an average of past years, shown on 14 days and 16 days.

6Before your trip to Mallorca: the month, not the week

If your trip is more than a week away, the month tells you more than any day card. The October page shows the temperatures and rain days of the month, the weather calendar the averages for every day of the year and the climate table all months side by side.