Best time to visit Jericoacoara: the two seasons

Jericoacoara has two seasons, and neither of them is the bad one. From July to January the trade winds blow hard and it barely rains: this is kite season, and the village is full. From February to June the wind softens, the rain arrives in March and April, the dunes turn green and the village empties out. The temperature hardly moves between the two — what moves is the wind.

The windy season, July to January

From July to January the north-easterly trades come in every day and the rain all but stops. This is the stretch when the village lives off the wind: kitesurf, wing foil, and a bay full of sails by mid-afternoon.

September and October are the windiest months of the year: the mean daily maximum reaches 31 km/h in both. August and November sit just behind. In the same months the rain disappears — 5 mm in September, 10 mm in October, against 362 mm in March.

It is also high season. December and January add the Brazilian summer and the school holidays to the wind, and they are the busiest weeks of the year in the village.

The green season, February to June

From February to June the wind drops by half, the rain arrives and the landscape changes colour. March is the wettest month, averaging 362 mm; April follows with 304 mm. It does not rain all day: these are short, heavy bursts, usually late in the day or overnight.

This is the season for an empty village. The sea flattens, the water warms, the lagoons fill, and the dunes go green instead of white. If you are coming to kite, it is the wrong time of year; if you are coming to stop, it is the best.

May and June are the shoulder months, and usually the most underrated on the calendar. Most of the rain has fallen — 135 mm in May, 48 mm in June, a long way from March's 362 mm — the green is still in the landscape, the lagoons are still high, and the wind is starting to come back. Anyone who can travel outside school holidays tends to find the best trade here between weather and quiet.

Month by month

The temperature column is the easy one to read: it hardly moves. The mean daily high runs between 29° and 33° across the whole year, and the mean low sits at 24° or 25° in all twelve months. Jericoacoara has no cold season — it has a windy season and a wet one.

The wind gets up in the afternoon, every day

Within a single day the wind keeps a schedule. In the windy season the hourly mean starts at 17 km/h at six in the morning and reaches 28 km/h at four in the afternoon: it roughly doubles between sunrise and late afternoon. In the green season the shape is identical at a smaller scale — 9 km/h before dawn, 16 km/h in the early afternoon.

Note the calmest hour: six in the morning, in both columns. And the windiest: four in the afternoon in the windy season, two in the afternoon in the green one. Between the two the wind more than doubles. That is the difference between a comfortable boat trip and a wet one.

It is why a day here organises itself: flat sea and boat in the morning, kite after lunch, dune at the end of the afternoon. Reverse the order and you spend the morning waiting for wind and the afternoon photographing chop.

See today's wind

Why the wind is so reliable

The wind at Jericoacoara is a trade wind: a north-easterly that crosses the Atlantic before it meets the coast of Ceará. It is not a local breeze that shows up some days and not others — it is an ocean-scale system, and that is what explains the regularity the numbers show.

In practice it changes how you plan. In many kite destinations you book and hope. Here, between August and November, the question is not whether it will blow but at what time. That predictability is what brought the first kitesurfers to the village and what still carries the season.

When the lagoons are full

The freshwater lagoons inland — Lagoa do Paraíso and Lagoa Azul, both in Jijoca — live off the rain of the first half of the year. They fill between February and June, which are exactly the months when it rains, and draw down through the second half, when it barely rains at all.

That produces two different experiences of the same lagoon. In the green season the water is at its highest and the sandbanks shrink. Late in the second half the level is lower, the water sits stiller and clearer, and the sandbars from the photographs appear. Neither one is the wrong version.

What an average cannot tell you is where the lagoon stands this month, this year. That is not in a table: the people who work at Villa Oasis watch the buggies come back every day, and know which of the two versions it is in right now.

What changes in the village between seasons

The most visible difference is not in the sky, it is in the street. In the windy season the main street is full every night, the tables come out onto the sand, and the sunset dune draws a crowd. In the green season the same street belongs to the people who live here, and the dune sometimes holds twenty people rather than three hundred.

It is worth saying plainly what that means for a traveller: high season buys energy and company, low season buys space and quiet. Both are real, and neither is the authentic one at the expense of the other.

And New Year

New Year is the most contested date on the Jeri calendar, and the one decided furthest ahead. The village fills, the main street becomes one long party, and houses tend to be taken whole. If that is your trip, it is arranged months out, not weeks.

So, when should you come?

If you are coming for the wind: August to November, with September and October above all. If you are coming for the quiet, the warm water and the full lagoons: March to June. If you want the middle of the road — good wind, rare rain, a village that can still breathe — July.

Choosing your window, and writing directly

Of everything decided about a trip here, the week you choose changes the stay most. It changes the wind, it changes the lagoon, it changes how many people climb the dune with you. No other variable comes close.

And it is not chosen in a calendar filter. The averages on this page say what October usually does; they do not say how the sea is this week, or whether the lagoon has already dropped this year. That part exists only in the head of someone who is here.

Writing to the house directly means reaching the people who run it, and who look at the dune every day. Say what you are coming for — wind, quiet, warm water — and the answer comes back with the weeks that suit it, and the ones that do not.

Talk to us about dates