Addis Ababa month by month — at a glance
Hover each month for the summary. Click to pin it.
01 A calendar that follows the sky
Key moments at a glance
5.3 mm in the whole month and 267 hours of sun. The driest month of the calendar.
From 18 rain days in September to 4, with the landscape still green.
A high of 25.8 °C, the year's warmest, with 66.3 mm over 7 days.
238.3 mm and 112 hours of sun: it rains nine days in ten.
It helps to understand that temperature barely intervenes here. At 2,355 metres, the mean high runs from 20.9 degrees in August to 25.8 in March: five degrees of range across twelve months. The mean low moves between 7.5 and 12.2. No month is hot and none is cold by day. The only thing that really changes is how much water falls.
And there the variation is enormous. The year totals 1,056.4 millimetres over about 132 rain days, but distributed very unevenly: November leaves 5.3 millimetres over a single wet day and August 241.8 over twenty-six. Between those two extremes there is a factor of forty-five.
02 Twenty-seven days of rain
The long season runs from June to September and is among the most concentrated you can find anywhere. June brings 118.9 millimetres over 20 days; July, 238.3 over 27; August, 241.8 over 26; September, 132.2 over 18. Between them they add up to 731 of the year's 1,056 millimetres: sixty-nine per cent.
Twenty-seven rain days out of thirty-one. In July the question is not whether it will rain: it is at what time.
Sunshine follows that curve in reverse and with the same abruptness. July records 111.6 hours of sunshine in the whole month — three and a half hours a day — and August, 133.3. In December it is 288.3, more than double. Of the year's 2,547 hours of sunshine, barely a tenth falls in July and August combined.
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03 The October door
The break is among the cleanest you will see in a climate table. From September's 132.2 millimetres to October's 32.2; from 18 rain days to 4; from 162 hours of sunshine to 248. In four weeks the country changes regime, and the Ethiopian calendar places the start of its year exactly there, on the hinge.
That moment also has an advantage the numbers do not show: the landscape. After four months of water, the countryside around the city is at its greenest exactly when the sky clears. October combines the two things — wet ground and sun — for a few weeks a year.
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04 Which month to pick
The good block runs from October to February, and within it October and November are the two best. October for the freshly washed green and November for the raw figures: 5.3 millimetres, one rain day and 267 hours of sunshine. December and January keep the sky open — 288 and 267 hours of sun — in exchange for the year's coldest nights, at mean lows of 7.5 and 8.6 degrees.
March, April and May are the short rainy season and they work better than their reputation suggests: between 66 and 91 millimetres a month over 7 to 10 days, with 210 to 242 hours of sunshine. The rain comes in the afternoon and mornings are usually saved. March is also the warmest month of the year.
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And June, July and August are the three months worth avoiding. Not for cold or heat — the temperature is the same as always — but because it rains between twenty and twenty-seven days out of thirty, sunshine drops to a third and the mountains around the city vanish behind cloud. Everything that makes being at 2,355 metres attractive stops being visible.
