Month by month
Bali in August
36mm of rain, the driest month of the year, and the one where the only real variable is other people.
August is the driest month in Bali and, despite being the middle of high season, the coolest one. Both of those are the opposite of what most people expect.
The southern lowlands take 36mm across the whole month, about a 7.9th of what falls in January. Days reach 29.2°C and nights fall to 23.7°C, and both are the lowest readings of the Bali year. What follows from that is the useful part: in August the weather stops being a question you have to plan around, and every decision you make is about crowds and price instead.
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What August actually measures
August is the shortest bar on the chart, and by some distance. It is the only month where the rainfall figure is small enough to stop mattering.
Rainfall
36 mm
The driest month of the year. An independent check at the same point puts it at 24mm.
Daytime high
29.2°C
The year’s lowest, shared with July. November is the hottest, at 31.6°C.
Night-time low
23.7°C
The coolest nights Bali gets, and the only time a light layer is worth packing for the coast.
As on the other month pages there is no count of rainy days, because the reanalysis and the airport station disagree by more than three times over, and no separate rainfall figure for Ubud, Munduk or the east coast, because the models that claim to resolve them contradict each other. The highlands stay greener and cloudier than the coast even now; we do not put a number on how much.
High season is the coolest month
The intuition almost everyone brings to a tropical destination is that the peak travel months are the hot ones. In Bali they are the cool ones. August shares the year's lowest daytime figure, 29.2°C, with July, and its nights at 23.7°C are the coolest on the record. The hottest month is November, at 31.6°C, which is in the wet season and which almost nobody targets.
The honest caveat is that 2.4°C across a whole year is not something a body registers. Nobody arrives in August and feels cool. What the figure does is settle a question people waste planning time on: there is no hot month to avoid in Bali and no cool month to seek out. The calendar is about rain and crowds, and August is the extreme of both, in opposite directions.
One consequence is real enough to pack for. August nights are the only ones that occasionally want a light layer at the coast, and up in Kintamani or Munduk, several degrees below these coastal figures at any time of year, a pre-dawn start in August is genuinely cold by the standards of the trip you are on.
The month where the crowd is the weather
Every other month page on this site spends its length on rain, because in every other month rain is the thing that can spoil a day. In August it cannot. 36mm is not a forecast you plan around; it is a rounding error. So the variable that decides whether an August trip goes well is entirely the other one.
August is the larger of Bali's two peaks. It is the northern-hemisphere summer holiday, so it stacks European and North American travellers on top of the regional market, and it runs for the full month rather than the ten days that Christmas and New Year occupy. In practice that means three things. Accommodation worth having goes early, and the gap between booking in March and booking in July is not small. The southern road network, which is slow at the best of times, is at its worst, so an hour on the map is not an hour. And anything with a sunrise, a viewpoint or a swing in its description has a queue by mid-morning.
The counter-move is the same one that works everywhere and works especially well here: shift early. Bali's sights empty out before about nine in the morning and refill for the rest of the day, and in the one month when you are guaranteed a clear dawn, that is a cheaper fix than it is in January. If the dates can move at all, the shoulder months either side of the peak hold nearly all of August's weather with a fraction of its crowd.
Where to base yourself in August
August is the month the advice inverts. On the December and January pages the highlands are a night rather than a base, because they catch more cloud and rain than the lowlands all year. Now they are at their best odds, and a few days in Munduk or Kintamani is a genuinely good use of an August week rather than a gamble on the view.
On the coast the calculation changes too. The reef-protected calm that makes Sanur the obvious wet-season pick matters less when the west coast is behaving, so Uluwatu and the Bukit come into their own, and Canggu and Seminyak are at their liveliest, for better and worse. The trade-off is that these are also where August's crowds concentrate.
All twelve bases, with what the airport transfer costs to each and who each one is wrong for, are on our where to stay in Bali page.
What August unlocks
The things that are a gamble in the wet season become plans. The fast boats to Nusa Penida and Nusa Lembongan are cancelled when the sea is rough, and in August it rarely is, so an island day can sit anywhere in the trip instead of being nursed through it. A Mount Batur sunrise has its best chance of an actual sunrise. And the west-coast surf that made Bali's name is in season, because the southeast trades blow offshore across the Bukit from April to October; our surfing guide has the seasonal switch in full.
One date is worth knowing. The 17th of August is Indonesia's Independence Day, a national public holiday, so government offices close and villages across the island put up flags and run local competitions and parades. It is not staged for visitors, which is rather the point of it.
What August is not good for is the version of Bali that photographs best. The rice terraces and the waterfalls are at their thinnest and least green now; that is January's Bali, and it is the trade you are making. Our weather guide covers the seasons across the year.
Every month of the Bali year, with its measured rainfall and what the average hides, is on Bali month by month.
Bali in August: common questions
What is the weather like in Bali in August?+
Dry and, by Bali standards, mild. August is the driest month of the year in the southern lowlands at 36mm, which is roughly a 7.9th of what falls in January. Daytime highs are 29.2C and nights 23.7C, and both are the lowest figures of the Bali year. It is the month people mean when they picture Bali weather, and it is also the busiest.
Is August the hottest month in Bali?+
No, it is the coolest. August shares the year's lowest daytime figure of 29.2C with July, and the year's lowest nights at 23.7C. The hottest month is November at 31.6C. The whole year moves only 2.4C, so nobody will notice this on their skin, but it does mean the standard assumption, that high season means peak heat, is the wrong way round in Bali.
Is August a good time to visit Bali?+
For weather, it is the best month of the year and nothing else comes close. For everything else it is the hardest: August is one of the two annual peaks, so it brings the highest prices, the fullest hotels, the worst traffic in the south and queues at the places that have none in February. Whether it is a good time depends entirely on whether you would rather trade money and crowds for certainty about the sky.
Does it rain in Bali in August?+
Barely. 36mm across the whole month is the site's measured figure, with an independent check at the same point putting it at 24mm. A shower is possible and the highlands stay greener and cloudier than the coast, but a trip planned around dry days in August will get them. This is the one month where you do not need to build the itinerary around the afternoon.
How busy is Bali in August?+
As busy as it gets, alongside late December. August is the northern-hemisphere summer holiday, so it stacks European and North American travellers on top of the regional market. Book accommodation and any tour with limited places well ahead, expect the drive between the south and Ubud to take longer than the map says, and go early to anything with a sunrise or a viewpoint in its description.
Is August good for surfing in Bali?+
It is the classic month. From April to October the southeast trade winds blow offshore on the west coast, which is what grooms the Bukit reefs, so Uluwatu, Padang Padang, Bingin and Balangan are all in season. That is also why they are crowded in August. The east-coast breaks that carry the wet season are the ones to leave alone now.
Can you visit the highlands and Nusa Penida in August?+
This is the month for both. The mountains around Munduk and Kintamani are wetter and cloudier than the coast all year, so a Batur sunrise or a Munduk waterfall walk has its best odds in the dry season. And the fast boats to Nusa Penida and Nusa Lembongan, which are cancelled when the sea is rough, are at their most reliable, so an island day is much safer to schedule than it is in January.