KwaZulu-Natal month by month — at a glance
Hover each month for the summary. Click to pin it.
Most trips to KwaZulu-Natal are planned around the heat: beach, Indian Ocean, Durban. But heat is the one thing this territory does the same all year. What really changes is the rain. In KwaZulu-Natal it rains in summer, and the southern winter, from May to August, is a dry, bright season that uncovers things summer hides: the bush, the sky, the frozen mountain and a sea that carries sardines and whales.
Here is the thesis: KwaZulu-Natal is best understood in the middle of winter, when the territory shows its vertical structure, from the subtropical coast to the crests of the Drakensberg, without the curtain of rain, humidity and foliage of the warm months. It is not a best-weather recommendation. It is a way of seeing the whole place.
01 A territory that rains when it is hot
Two stations show it clearly. In Pietermaritzburg, in the inland hills, 155 millimetres fall in January over 22 rainy days. In July, 2 millimetres fall and it rains on one day. Add the three summer months (December, January and February) and you get 384 millimetres; the three winter ones (June, July and August) add up to 23. That is a difference of more than sixteen times.
On the coast the contrast is smaller, but it is there. Durban airport collects 121.6 millimetres in January and 29.5 in June, and goes from 9.8 to 2.4 rainy days. The annual average is 975.6 millimetres; at Richards Bay, further north, it rises to 1,228. In the mountains the pattern repeats: according to local sources, close to 70% of the annual rain falls between November and March, in afternoon storms.
That rain has cultural consequences. The Midmar Mile, the open-water swim held in February at Midmar Dam since 1974, drew 13,755 participants in 2009, and it is swum in high summer, with the dam full. At the other end of the calendar, the Comrades ultramarathon, about 88 kilometres between Durban and Pietermaritzburg, is run in May or June, already inside the dry season. One territory splits its sporting calendar between the rainy season and the dry one.
Key moments at a glance
A 28.6-degree high in Durban and waterfalls in full flow. Showers are frequent.
Durban keeps 23.6 degrees while the interior freezes at night. This is the month the territory shows its whole vertical sweep.
Humpback whales are still passing and the first rains green the countryside without summer's heat.
Leatherback and loggerhead nesting begins on the north coast. In return, summer has already settled in.
02 The coast that barely cools
The coast of KwaZulu-Natal barely registers a winter. At Durban airport the mean high is 28.0 degrees in January and 22.8 in July: five degrees of difference across the whole year. The sunniest month is not a summer one but July, with 230.4 hours against January's 184.0. The reason is simple: in summer clouds and rain steal the sun; in winter the sky stays clear.
For the sea, this dry season coincides with two phenomena. Between May and July the sardine run window opens, when enormous shoals of sardines move up South Africa's east coast towards Mozambique as the water drops below about 21 degrees. The shoals, which can be more than seven kilometres long, pull in dolphins, sharks, gannets and Bryde's whales. And between June and November humpback whales pass off the KwaZulu-Natal coast, in a migration of thousands of animals. The sardine run is a natural phenomenon, not a scheduled show: its exact timing cannot be guaranteed.
There is an honest caveat. July is not Durban's driest month: it records 58.5 millimetres, more than June (29.5) and August (31.1). On the coast, winter is dry in places, not dry throughout. The interior, by contrast, is.
03 The bush that lets itself be seen and the mountain that freezes
Hluhluwe–iMfolozi is Africa's oldest reserve, founded in 1895, with 960 square kilometres and some 1,600 white rhinoceroses. Its best time for seeing wildlife is the dry season, from May to September, when vegetation thins and animals gather beside the rivers and the few waters that remain. Between December and March, with thick bush and muddy tracks, the same reserve looks more closed.
Further west, the contrast is total. The Drakensberg, which forms the province's western border and is a World Heritage site, has a dry, bright, cold winter: from May to August frosts are common in the valleys and snow now and then covers the summits above roughly 2,500 metres. In Pietermaritzburg the mean low for June and July is 3 degrees, and the record is minus 4. On the same day, Durban reaches 23.
In that difference lies the essence of the place: a province of 94,361 square kilometres that runs from sea level to more than 3,000 metres, whose climates stack vertically. Only in winter, with clean air and no storms closing the view, can that stacking be grasped at a glance. That same range holds between 35,000 and 40,000 works of San rock art, spread across hundreds of rock shelters.
In summer you see KwaZulu-Natal from inside. In winter you see all of it.
04 What only exists with the heat
It would be unfair to the territory to present winter as the only version worth having. Some things only happen with heat and rain. Between November and January, leatherback and loggerhead turtles come out of the sea to lay eggs on the beaches of the north coast, between Kosi and Mabibi and around Sodwana Bay. Fewer than a hundred female leatherbacks arrive each year, and the eggs incubate for about 65 days, and the hatchlings emerge mostly in January and February.
The mountain has its summer face too. The Tugela drops 947 metres down the Drakensberg escarpment in a series of falls, and it is in February that the seasonal flow is greatest; in the dry months it drops. It is a transformation you only see by comparing one season with another.
05 What winter costs
Choosing winter has a price. Inland, the mornings are cold: a 3-degree low in Pietermaritzburg, with frost in the valley, and at altitude the cold is harsher. Anyone arriving with a tropical beach in mind will find a mild coast, with a cooler sea than in summer and a month, July, with more rain than expected.
You also lose the green. January's landscape, with saturated green hills, full wetlands and waterfalls in flow, is another landscape. You lose the turtles, the full dams and the sense of an exuberant territory that the rainy season gives. What you gain is visibility and structure; what you lose is abundance.
06 How to read the year
If you want to understand KwaZulu-Natal as a territory of contrasts, go from June to August. That is when the dry season lets you see the bush, the air is clean, the coast stays warm and the mountain freezes. If you are after wildlife in Hluhluwe–iMfolozi, the best time is May to September, with July and August the clearest stretch.
If what draws you is what only happens with rain, choose another date: November and December for turtle nesting, February for the waterfalls and the dams, and accept the humid heat. September is the kindest transition month: whales are still passing, the rain returns gradually and the countryside begins to green without the heat being heavy.
What does not exist in another season is the complete view: the same day, a coast at 23 degrees, a thinned-out bush and a range with frost. KwaZulu-Natal is not a beach place with a mountain backdrop. It is one long slope, from sea to summit, and winter is the season in which it can be seen whole.
