Accra month by month — at a glance
Hover each month for the summary. Click to pin it.
01 Two rains and a gap
Key moments at a glance
245 hours of sun and 37.2 mm over fewer than three rain days.
11.8 mm over 0.8 rain days: practically a month without water.
21.0 mm and 28.4 °C, the coolest month, with only 147 hours of sun.
189.6 mm over 10.2 days and sunshine near its annual low.
The full series shows the two humps clearly. January 11.8; February 25.5; March 61.1; April 87.8; May 151.4; June 189.6; July 63.0; August 21.0; September 42.9; October 80.0; November 37.2; December 27.2. The annual total is around 799 millimetres over barely 54 rain days.
Temperature, meanwhile, barely takes part. The mean high runs from 28.4 degrees in August to 33.0 in February and March, and the low moves between 22.9 and 25.4. Five degrees of annual range above and two and a half below: there are no cold or hot months here, there are months with water and months without.
02 The August parenthesis
The mid-year gap is the most counter-intuitive thing on the calendar. After June's peak, the rain collapses: 63.0 millimetres in July and 21.0 in August, less than in February. On paper, August looks like an excellent month to travel.
August is the second driest month of the year and, at the same time, the one with the least sun. Here, not raining and being fine are two different things.
On the ground it is another matter. July and August are the two months with the fewest hours of sunshine on the calendar — 150.8 and 146.8 — and also the coolest, with mean highs of 28.6 and 28.4 degrees. It is a dry but overcast period: low cloud, flat light and a grey sea for weeks.
03 A coast that ought to be rainforest
There is a background fact that explains all of the above and changes how you look at the landscape. Accra receives around 720 millimetres of rain a year: less than half what is needed to sustain tropical rainforest, which is what a coast six degrees from the equator ought to have.
The city sits at the centre of a known anomaly: a savanna corridor that interrupts West Africa's forest belt and separates the Upper Guinean forests, to the west, from the Lower Guinean ones, to the east. The causes are oceanic and atmospheric, and among them weighs a tongue of cold water that surfaces off this coast.
For the traveller this has one very concrete consequence: what surrounds Accra is not jungle, it is dry grass and scattered trees. Anyone arriving expecting the humid tropics of the photographs will have to head inland, where the forest does begin. The coast is something else, and that is exactly why it rains so little here.
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04 Which month to pick
The good block runs from November to February, and November is the best of all: 37.2 millimetres over fewer than three rain days and 244.9 hours of sunshine, the year's peak. December and January follow closely, at 27.2 and 11.8 millimetres. It is the only part of the calendar where little rain and plenty of light coincide.
October deserves a separate mention. It brings 80.0 millimetres, more than November, but 237.6 hours of sunshine: the short season's rain falls concentrated and then clears. For anyone who does not mind getting wet one afternoon, it is a month with very good light and fewer people.
May to July is when to think twice: 151, 190 and 63 millimetres with sunshine falling to 151 hours. And August is the calendar's trap: dry on paper, grey on the ground. If you travel then, count on overcast skies almost daily and not on the beaches of the photographs.
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