Summer Far Kinder To Northeast Iceland Than Reykjavík

The weather forecast for the next few days illustrates a common theme in Icelandic summers: the northeast gets better weather than the southwest.

If you were in Reykjavík last weekend, enjoying the warm and sunny weather, hold on to those memories. As can be seen on the official page of the Icelandic Met Office, southwesterners can expect that the rest of the work week will be characterised by single-digit temperatures, heavy cloud cover and rain.

In the northeast, however, an almost mirror image of Reykjavík weather emerges – mostly sunny and double-digit temperatures, climbing possibly as high as 18°C. These conditions, especially in Seyðisfjörður and Egilsstaðir, will persist until Friday.

This news will come as little surprise to Icelanders. The northeast of Iceland usually experiences warmer temperatures and sunnier skies than the capital area. The trade-off (or, possibly, another advantage) is that the northeast usually experiences considerably more snowfall in the winter than Reykjavík does.

With this in mind, those visiting Iceland this week who are less than impressed with Reykjavík’s version of summer would do well to travel to the northeast.