Asmara month by month — at a glance
Hover each month for the summary. Click to pin it.
01 Three and a half degrees
Key moments at a glance
21.7 °C by day, 15.4 mm and 273 hours of sun, with clear air after the rains.
291 hours of sun and 3.7 mm, but the mean low drops to 4.3 °C.
41.1 mm over 5 days: isolated showers that do not spoil the month.
174.9 mm over 13 days and 152 hours of sun: half of January's.
The full series of mean highs reads like this: January 22.3; February 23.8; March 25.1; April 25.1; May 25.0; June 24.9; July 21.6; August 21.5; September 22.9; October 21.7; November 21.5; December 21.5. It is an almost horizontal line. No month is "summer" and none is "winter" in the usual thermal sense.
That makes Asmara a pleasant logistical oddity: the clothes that work in March work in November. The annual mean high is 23.1 degrees and the mean low 8.0. And the sun turns up almost always: 2,922 hours a year, an average of eight a day, reaching 291 in the month of January.
02 Eighteen degrees before dinner
The movement that does exist is vertical, inside the same day. In January the mean high is 22.3 degrees and the mean low 4.3: exactly eighteen degrees of daily range. In December it is 16.7 and in February 18.7. That is the city's real climate, and that is what you pack for.
Three and a half degrees separate the coolest month from the warmest. Eighteen separate midday from dawn on the same January day.
The cause is altitude combined with very dry air and clear skies: by day the sun heats unobstructed at 2,325 metres, and by night the heat escapes just as fast. So at midday you walk in short sleeves and by seven in the evening you need a jumper, and in January perhaps something more.
03 The two rains
If temperature is no use for ordering the year, rain is. Asmara receives 518.6 millimetres a year over about 47 days, and it does not spread them: July brings 174.9 millimetres over 13 days and August 155.6 over 12. Those two months hold sixty-four per cent of the year's water.
Before that long season there is another, short and far more bearable: April, May and June leave between 33 and 41 millimetres a month over four or five days. These are isolated showers that do not organise the day. The difference between the two rains is one of scale, not nuance: May brings 41 millimetres and July 175.
The exit is one of the cleanest breaks you will see in a climate table. From August's 155.6 millimetres to September's 15.6: a tenth as much, from one month to the next. And the cloud leaves with the rain: sunshine climbs from 158 hours in August to 213 in September and 273 in October.
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04 Which month to pick
October is the best month, and not by much. It has a high of 21.7, a low of 8.1, 15.4 millimetres over two days and 273 hours of sun, and it arrives just after the big rains, when the air is clean and the countryside around is still green. September works almost as well and November follows closely.
December, January and February have the clearest skies — 282, 291 and 260 hours of sunshine — and are the driest months of the calendar, at 3.4, 3.7 and 2.0 millimetres. In exchange they bring the year's cold nights: mean lows of 4.8, 4.3 and 5.1 degrees. If you do not mind wrapping up after dark, they are excellent.
March closes the good block with the year's highest mean high, 25.1 degrees, and only 14.6 millimetres. From April to June you can travel without difficulty if you accept the odd afternoon shower. And July and August are the only two months worth dodging: not for cold or heat, but because it rains thirteen days out of thirty and the sunshine halves.
