Malabo month by month — at a glance
Hover each month for the summary. Click to pin it.
01 Four against twenty-one
Key moments at a glance
28.9 mm over three and a half days. The only month under 30 mm.
39.6 mm over four days and the peak of nesting on the south of the island.
From 254 mm in October to 100 in November. The month the window opens.
20.6 rain days and 48 hours of sun in the whole month.
The full series leaves little room for interpretation. January, 28.9 millimetres. December, 39.6. February, 70.6. And from there the curve takes off: March 102.7; April 155.7; May 227.1; June 260.8; July 202.0; August 177.1; September 250.1; October 254.3. November drops abruptly to 100.3 and the cycle starts again.
It is also worth reading the rain days rather than only the millimetres, because in the tropics a half-hour downpour is not the same as a month under cloud. September accumulates less water than June but has more rain days than any other month: 20.6. That is, it rains two days in every three. No excursion can be planned around that.
02 The three dry months
The useful window is short and very clear: December, January and February. Between them they add up to 139 millimetres and about twelve rain days, figures that June reaches in a little over a week. They are also the three sunniest months of the year, with 118, 121 and 122 hours respectively.
December, January and February add up to 139 millimetres between them. June alone brings 261. That is not a nuance: it is a different country.
March and November are the shoulders, and they work differently. November is the month of retreat — from 254 millimetres in October to 100 — and works for anyone wanting to get ahead of the crowd. March is the month of return, with 102.7 millimetres but already almost ten rain days, and it worsens week by week. Of the two, November is the safer bet.
03 Forty-three hours of sun
One figure describes what the wet season means here better than any other. In July, Malabo records 43.4 hours of sunshine in the whole month. Not per day: in the entire month. That works out at under an hour and a half a day in a city less than four degrees from the equator, where daylight lasts twelve hours on all three hundred and sixty-five days.
August and September do not improve much: 52.7 and 48.0 hours. In total the year adds up to 1,050 hours of sunshine, and more than a third of them fall in the four dry months. The visible consequence is that in the wet half of the year Pico Basilé, which is right there, simply cannot be seen.
04 What falls inside the window
The dry window is not only more comfortable: it coincides with the most important natural event on the island's calendar. Sea turtles nest on the beaches of southern Bioko between November and February, peaking in December and January, and there are four different species: leatherback, green, olive ridley and hawksbill.
It is no coincidence, and it is not comfortable either. Those nineteen kilometres of beach are at the far end of the island, in an area ranked among the rainiest places on the planet even in the dry season. But the same month that makes the trip viable is the one that concentrates the nesting, so the decision makes itself.
The summary, then, is simple. January and December are the two best months, with February close behind; November works well if you prefer the start of the season. March is acceptable. And from May to October it is not a matter of occasional rain: the entire month sits under cloud, with twenty wet days and under two hours of sun a day.
