Venice weather, and what MOSE changed

Venice averages 57.0°F (13.9°C¹) across the year at the Tessera station, from 38.7°F (3.7°C) in January to 75.9°F (24.4°C¹) in July, with 762.3 mm² of rain spread across all twelve months.

Summer: a mean maximum of 84.2°F (29.0°C) in July

July is the warm end of the year here, mean 75.9°F (24.4°C¹) and mean daily maximum 84.2°F (29.0°C); August follows at 75.0°F (23.9°C) and 83.5°F (28.6°C). Those maxima sit below Rome and below Milan.

The lagoon does the moderating. What it does not moderate is the humidity, which the normals do not measure and every August visitor does.

Winter: nights at 32.4°F (0.2°C)

January is the coldest month, mean 38.7°F (3.7°C), mean daily maximum 45.9°F (7.7°C), mean daily minimum 32.4°F (0.2°C). February follows at 41.0°F (5.0°C) mean.

Month by month means, in °F with °C in brackets: 38.7 (3.7), 41.0 (5.0), 48.2 (9.0), 55.9 (13.3), 64.8 (18.2), 71.8 (22.1), 75.9 (24.4¹), 75.0 (23.9), 66.9 (19.4), 58.1 (14.5), 48.6 (9.2), 39.9 (4.4).

Rain: 762.3 mm, and no dry month at all

The wettest month is May at 80.2 mm², the driest January at 40.2 mm², and the annual total is 762.3 mm² on a complete series with no month missing. Between those two extremes everything sits in a narrow band: 57.9 mm in July, 73.3 in September, 71.5 in November.

That is the difference between Venice and the Italian south. There is no summer drought to plan around, so pack for rain in any month and stop reading the seasonal charts.

Acqua alta is a tide, not a rainstorm

High water is driven by the astronomical tide, the sirocco wind and atmospheric pressure: not one of those 762.3 mm² has anything to do with it. A cloudless afternoon can still put water across the pavement of San Marco.

MOSE has been operational since 2020, and on March 12, 2025 it completed its hundredth closure of the lagoon. The Ministry of Infrastructure and Transport estimates those hundred closures avoided more than 2.6 billion euro of damage. The highest tide it has confronted was above 1.80 m, on November 22, 2022.

The tide level that triggers a closure is quoted at different values by different newspapers, and we could not confirm the one currently in force on an official source, so this page does not print it.

Two values the series does not have

Two figures in the Venice record are coded as unavailable, because fewer than 24 of the 30 years are valid: the mean daily maximum for March and the annual mean daily maximum. We leave them blank instead of estimating them.

The annual mean minimum, 49.3°F (9.6°C), is confirmed by the independent ISPRA series for the same period.

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