Luanda month by month — at a glance
Hover each month for the summary. Click to pin it.
01 An almost-desert tropic
Key moments at a glance
The coolest month of the year, a mean of 22.1 °C, and not a drop of rain.
229.4 hours of sun at 27 °C and barely 16 mm. The year's best combination.
136 mm over eleven days: a third of the year's rain in four weeks.
The data come from the 1961–1990 series, with extremes collected since 1879. The annual total is 405 millimetres over 53 rain days, the annual mean is 25.8 °C and sunshine adds up to 2,277.6 hours a year. And there is a warning worth carrying: the year-to-year variability of the rainfall exceeds 40%.
That last figure matters more than it seems. A coefficient of variation above 40% means the annual mean describes poorly what will happen in any given year: half or double may fall. The dry months are reliable; the wet ones far less so.
02 Dry and humid at once
Here is the peculiarity that throws anyone arriving with the rainfall table in hand. Mean relative humidity never drops below 78% all year, and in August it reaches 85%. Which is to say: the city has greenhouse air in the months when not a single millimetre falls.
June and July: zero millimetres of rain and 82 and 83% humidity. The water is in the air, not in the sky.
The practical consequence is haze. In the dry months, May to October, frequent fog prevents the temperature from falling at night, and the sky stays a flat white that is neither cloud nor clear. August and September are the two least sunny months of the year — 148.8 and 150 hours — precisely when no rain falls at all.
03 The two months of rain
March and April concentrate 250 of the year's 405 millimetres: 62% in two months. April is the wettest at 136 millimetres over eleven days, and March the second at 114 over nine. They are also the two warmest months, with means of 28.6 and 28.2 degrees.
Peak heat and peak rain at once, with humidity at 80 and 83%. It is the calendar's worst combination, and the most unpredictable given the variability already noted. The series' absolute heat record, 37.2 degrees, belongs to March.
04 When to go
May, June and July. May is the sunniest month of the year at 229.4 hours and only 16 millimetres of rain, still at a mean of 27 degrees. June drops to 23.9 with zero rain. July is the coolest of all, a mean of 22.1, and also without a drop.
October is the other reasonable option: 25.2 degrees, 7 millimetres and light recovering to 167.4 hours after the August–September trough. It is the month when the haze ends and the rain has not yet returned.
What to avoid is March and April, for the heat and the water together. And it is worth knowing that August and September, dry and cool as they are, are the white-sky months: if you are coming for photography or for the colour of the sea, they are not your moment.
.jpg?width=1600)
