Weather and Climate, Best Time to Visit the West Highlands

Let’s just say it straight: it rains a lot in the West Highlands. Very often. But even here there are months that are sunnier and warmer. Which ones, you’ll find out here.

In our overview we take the West Highlands to include the former counties of Cromarty and Ross. That’s why the West Highlands also reach across to the east coast.

However, we haven’t found suitable weather stations here that offer exact comparable data. Inverness lies only a few kilometres below the two counties and can therefore be used as a comparison. For the west coast, we’ll look at the data from Kinlochewe.

Both weather stations sit at roughly the same latitude on the map of Scotland. The results, though, very vividly show the stark difference between the west and east coasts of the Highlands.

Even the average temperatures differ by around one to two degrees. But it gets really dramatic with the rain: in summer, fully twice as much rain falls on the west coast as on the east coast.

There are also several more full rain days involved – around four or five per month. In winter, sometimes as much as three times the amount of water falls from the sky.

On top of that, keep in mind that the numbers of Highland midges, the biting flies, are usually noticeably higher in the west too.

In short: for the east coast, the whole summer can be considered a good time to visit. For the west coast, May is again the insider tip, promising fewer midges and less rain.