When to go to Mauritius: an island of two seasons

Mauritius does not have four seasons; it has two. Summer, hot and humid, runs from November to April. Winter, relatively cool and dry, lasts from June to September. Between them, May and October are months of transition that belong wholly to neither. Everything else, from travel advice and last-minute offers to the habits of one visitor or another, is grafted onto this division.

Temperatures and rainfall

The mean summer temperature is 24.7°C, the winter mean 20.4°C. Both figures apply to the island as a whole, and they erase the difference between the coast and the central plateau, which is nonetheless one of the first things a visitor notices on leaving the shore. The hottest months are January and February, when the mean daytime maximum reaches 29.2°C. The coolest are July and August, when the mean night-time minimum falls to 16.4°C.

Rainfall follows the same pattern. The island receives an average of 2,010 millimetres of rain a year, a long-term mean calculated over the period 1971 to 2000. Most of it falls in summer: 1,344 millimetres, against 666 millimetres in winter. February and March are the wettest months, October the driest.

These are whole-island averages, established over thirty years. They promise nothing about any given day, and they do not describe one slope rather than another. In Mauritius, 2,010 millimetres a year covers very different realities depending on where one stands.

The cyclone season on the calendar

The cyclone season runs from 1 November to 15 May of the following year. It coincides exactly with the southern summer. In other words, the hottest season, when the sea is at its warmest and the days at their longest, is also the one in which a tropical system may pass through.

This does not mean that six and a half months of the year are to be avoided. It means that, within this window, a trip carries an unknown that winter does not, and that this unknown can be managed. Mauritius has a public warning system graded in four classes. A visitor travelling between November and May would do well to know what a Class II warning means before having to find out on the spot.

Summer 2026-2027

The seasonal outlook for summer 2026-2027, issued on 27 October 2026 for Mauritius and Rodrigues, forecasts between five and seven named storms in the South-West Indian Ocean basin. A named storm in the basin does not necessarily affect the Republic of Mauritius: a system passing well offshore may send nothing but swell, and it has to pass very close to cause a storm surge.

As for rainfall, the season is expected to be below normal in Mauritius, with a total of around 1,100 millimetres, or 80 per cent of the long-term mean. Rodrigues is expected to be slightly above, at around 930 millimetres, or 115 per cent of its mean. As for temperatures, the summer looks set to be warmer than normal: some days could exceed the long-term monthly mean by more than three degrees, with maxima close to 36°C on the west coasts of Mauritius and close to 33°C on the Rodrigues shoreline.

A seasonal outlook indicates a trend, not the weather for a particular week, and it is revised as the season goes on. For anyone planning a stay, however, it has one merit: it shows which way the season is leaning, and it shows it before the season rather than after.

Choosing your dates

Three facts are enough to frame the choice. First, summer is hot, humid and wet, with February and March recording the highest rainfall, and it is also the cyclone season. Second, winter is cooler and drier, and the mean night-time minimum of July and August, 16.4°C, explains why a jumper is far from absurd on an evening on the plateau. Third, October is the driest month of the year and one of the two months of transition: it comes just before the cyclone season opens, on 1 November.

There is, for all that, no single answer. The driest month is not necessarily the most pleasant, and the warmest sea comes at the price of humidity. Those in search of heat and long days will come in summer, accepting the rain and the uncertainty of cyclones. Those who prefer drier air and cool nights will choose winter. And those who cannot decide will look towards May and October, the two months that borrow a little from each season.