{"id":10081,"date":"2026-08-01T18:12:19","date_gmt":"2026-08-01T17:12:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.turizmtatilseyahat.com\/en\/?p=10081"},"modified":"2026-08-01T18:12:19","modified_gmt":"2026-08-01T17:12:19","slug":"greek-islands-august-weather-meltemi-ferries","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.turizmtatilseyahat.com\/en\/greek-islands-august-weather-meltemi-ferries\/","title":{"rendered":"Greek Islands in August: the Meltemi, the Heat and Your Ferry"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>August in the Greek islands is shaped by one thing more than any other, and it is not the heat. It is the <strong>meltemi<\/strong>, the northerly wind that blows across the Aegean through midsummer. It keeps the islands cooler than the mainland, and it is also the reason ferry crossings get cancelled.<\/p>\n<h2>How strong it gets<\/h2>\n<p>The month opened with northerly winds of <strong>four to six on the Beaufort scale<\/strong> across the eastern seas, locally seven, and temporarily <strong>eight in the southern Aegean<\/strong>. Some stations recorded nine. On Evia, gusts reached <strong>130 kilometres an hour<\/strong> at Karystos.<\/p>\n<p>The wind typically strengthens through the afternoon and eases overnight, which is why morning crossings are the safer booking on a tight schedule.<\/p>\n<h2>Heat: eight degrees between island and mainland<\/h2>\n<p>On the same day, the mainland sat at 34 to 35 degrees with local peaks of <strong>37<\/strong>, while the Cyclades did not pass <strong>28 to 29<\/strong>. That gap is the meltemi at work. It is also the practical argument for putting the island section of a trip in the first half of August and the walking or sightseeing section later.<\/p>\n<h2>What the wind does to ferries<\/h2>\n<p>Two kinds of boat run the routes. Conventional ferries are slower but hold their schedule in rough seas. High-speed catamarans halve the journey and are the first to be cancelled when the wind rises; at force seven and above, small craft stay in port.<\/p>\n<p>The consequence for planning is simple. If a ferry connects to a flight home, book the slow boat and leave a spare day. A cancelled catamaran in high season does not mean a later sailing, it can mean the next day.<\/p>\n<h2>What the rest of the month looks like<\/h2>\n<p>Forecasts point to the meltemi easing between roughly <strong>4 and 10 August<\/strong>, with temperatures rising again as warmer air arrives from the western and south-western Mediterranean. Some models also expect dust carried up from Africa.<\/p>\n<p>So the shape of the month is wind first, heat second. That order matters: the windy stretch is the one that threatens your schedule, the hot stretch is the one that threatens your afternoon plans.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>August opened in Greece with gusts to nine on the Beaufort scale in the Aegean and 37 degrees on the mainland. The wind is what decides whether your ferry sails.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":10084,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"jnews_post_split":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,7873],"tags":[8487,8482,8479,8477,8485,8475,8486],"class_list":["post-10081","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-tourism","category-travel","tag-greece-ferry-cancellations","tag-greece-heatwave","tag-greece-holiday-planning","tag-greece-travel","tag-greek-islands-in-august","tag-greek-islands-travel","tag-meltemi-wind"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turizmtatilseyahat.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10081","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turizmtatilseyahat.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turizmtatilseyahat.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turizmtatilseyahat.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/18"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turizmtatilseyahat.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10081"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.turizmtatilseyahat.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10081\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10087,"href":"https:\/\/www.turizmtatilseyahat.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10081\/revisions\/10087"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turizmtatilseyahat.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10084"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turizmtatilseyahat.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10081"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turizmtatilseyahat.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10081"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turizmtatilseyahat.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10081"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}