Iceland Weather is a live weather site for people travelling in Iceland: the weather at every town and sight, what to wear, whether it's safe to drive, the northern lights tonight and what to expect month by month — from real Icelandic measurements.
Made for visitors
Over two hundred towns and sights have a page of their own: the weather now, what to wear, whether it's safe to drive there, local dangers like the sneaker waves at Reynisfjara, tonight's northern lights and what the weather is usually like each month. The road-conditions page covers the mountain passes, and the month guides cover averages around the country, daylight and what to pack.
Safety first
This is not an official forecast. Always follow the Icelandic Met Office's warnings, check the roads on umferdin.is and travel alerts on safetravel.is before you set off. In an emergency, call 112.
Wind matters more than temperature
In Iceland the wind decides your day more than the thermometer does. So we show gusts everywhere, warn when they're strong enough to matter for a car or a campervan, and dress you for the wind chill, not the temperature.
Measured, not just forecast
Next to every forecast we show the nearest real measurement from the Icelandic Met Office, and the mountain passes come straight from the Road Administration's roadside weather stations. The month guides are averages of what the Met Office's own stations measured from 1991 to 2020, with the records from the same station series — Met Office data under CC BY 4.0, processed by us.
The weeks ahead, honestly
For the next two weeks we show all 51 runs of ECMWF's ensemble forecast: the likely high and low, and how far the runs disagree, so you can see how much to trust it. Further out, ECMWF's extended-range (EC46) and seasonal (SEAS5) forecasts can only say whether a week or a month leans warmer or wetter than usual — so that is all we let them say. "Usual" is always the Met Office's own measured average.
The sky is the forecast
The sky at the top of each page isn't a photo — it's drawn from the forecast: the sun where it really is, the cloud, rain, snow and fog, and the aurora when it's dark and clear. Drag across the timeline and the sky follows the hours ahead.
Forecasts, compared
No forecast is perfect. The face-off page puts seven weather models side by side and shows which one got this place right over the last two days.
Where the numbers come from
Every number on the site, where it comes from and how fresh it is. The pages themselves are at most 5 minutes old.
| Data | Source | How fresh |
|---|---|---|
| Measured weather now | Icelandic Met Office automatic weather stations | Stations report hourly; we check every 10 minutes and never show a reading older than 3 hours. |
| Forecast, 48 hours and 10 days | MET Norway (yr.no); gusts from DMI's HARMONIE model | Refreshed at least every 30 minutes. |
| Warnings and written forecasts | Icelandic Met Office (alerts and duty meteorologists) | Warnings checked every few minutes; written forecasts are issued several times a day. |
| Mountain passes | Icelandic Road Administration roadside stations | Checked every few minutes. |
| Northern lights | NOAA SWPC (aurora model and Kp forecast); cloud cover from MET Norway and Open-Meteo | Every 15–30 minutes. |
| The next two weeks | ECMWF's 51-member ensemble, via Open-Meteo | Checked hourly; ECMWF runs it twice a day. |
| Weeks 3–6 and the season | ECMWF's extended-range (EC46, daily) and seasonal (SEAS5, monthly) forecasts, via Open-Meteo | Checked every 6 hours. |
| Month guides | Icelandic Met Office station measurements: 1991–2020 averages, records since each station opened | Fixed; recalculated once a year. |
| Forecast face-off | Open-Meteo (HARMONIE, ECMWF, ICON, UKMO, GFS) and Met Office station forecasts | Every 20 minutes. |