Conakry month by month — at a glance
Hover each month for the summary. Click to pin it.
01 One thousand one hundred and forty-two millimetres
Key moments at a glance
1.4 mm in the whole month and 224 hours of sun. Practically zero water.
251 hours of sun, the year's peak, with just 3.4 mm of rain.
From 293 mm in October to 80, and from 17 rain days to just over five.
1,142.1 mm over 28.2 days and 87 hours of sun in the entire month.
The annual total is 3,729.9 millimetres over about 131 rain days, which makes Conakry one of the rainiest capitals on the planet. But the figure that really describes the year is not the total: it is how it is distributed. June, July, August and September add up to 3,213.5 millimetres, eighty-six per cent of everything.
Temperature, by contrast, barely takes part. The mean high runs from 28.4 degrees in August to 32.3 in April, and the low moves between 22.3 and 24.6 across the whole year. As in so many cities at this latitude, the calendar here is written by the rain gauge, not the thermometer.
02 And in February, one point four
The other end of the calendar is just as emphatic. January leaves 2.5 millimetres; February, 1.4; March, 3.4; December, 5.5. Added together those four months do not reach 13 millimetres, and the rain days are counted in tenths: 0.3, 0.2, 0.5 and 0.4.
One thousand one hundred and forty-two millimetres in August; one point four in February. The same city, the same year, and a difference of eight hundred times.
Sunshine follows that curve in reverse, and with the same abruptness. From August's 87 hours you go to 251 in March, almost three times as many. In total the year adds up to 2,222 hours of sunshine, and more than half of them fall in the five dry months.
03 What the water does to the country
Those nearly four metres of rain do not stay on the coast. The water that falls on Guinea between June and September is what fills, downstream, much of West Africa's river network, and it is why this country works as its neighbours' reservoir.
For the traveller, the practical consequence is that the wet season does not merely soak: it blocks. The inland tracks become impassable, the rivers rise and road journeys go from long to impossible. It is not a question of packing a raincoat: it is a question of not being able to get there.
04 Which month to pick
The answer is one of the easiest to give anywhere on the continent: December to April, and that is that. These are five months with between 1.4 and 17.9 millimetres of rain a month and between 214 and 251 hours of sunshine. Within that block, February and March are the best: the driest and the brightest.
April is the warmest month of the year, at a mean high of 32.3 degrees, and already brings the first clouds; it remains perfectly viable. November is the door in from the other side: 80 millimetres over a little more than five days, with the rain already retreating and the countryside still green from the season.
And June to October is not a matter of a lot of rain: it is a matter of between 293 and 1,142 millimetres a month, on between 17 and 28 days out of thirty, with sunshine cut to a third. It is one of the most intense wet seasons in the world, and travelling inside it means giving up almost everything outside the city.
