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Monrovia month by month — at a glance
Hover each month for the summary. Click to pin it.
01 Four thousand five hundred and sixty-one
Key moments at a glance
The driest month: 26 mm over four days and 158 hours of sun.
198 hours of sun, the year's peak, with 97 mm over eight days.
The darkest month of the year: 2.6 hours of sun a day on average.
914 mm over 24 days. The wettest month, and by a wide margin.
The sunshine figure is what really describes how that volume of water is lived. The year adds up to 1,662 hours of sun, but they are very unevenly spread: March has 198 and August 81. Eighty-one hours over thirty-one days is two and a half hours a day. It is not continuous rain: it is an almost permanently covered sky.
Relative humidity goes with it and never drops significantly: the annual mean is 81 %, with a minimum of 76 % in February and a maximum of 86 % in September. It is a factor that alters how the heat feels far more than the degrees do, and one worth bearing in mind when packing.
02 Two peaks, not one
The rainy season is not a symmetrical bell, and this is what almost no guide explains. There are two maxima separated by a lull: June rises to 818 millimetres, July falls to 696, August falls further to 561, and September shoots back up to 914. That gap in July and August is a recognisable phenomenon all along this coast.
August rains less than June and has less sun than any other month. Here less water does not mean more light.
The trap is worth understanding. A traveller looking only at the rainfall column might think August, with 561 millimetres and 17 rain days, is the reasonable moment to slip inside the wet season. The sunshine column says otherwise: 81 hours, the year's absolute minimum. The lull in the rain arrives with the most closed sky.
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03 The four-month window
The good news is that the dry window exists and is sharp. From December to March, 48, 26, 48 and 97 millimetres fall: normal figures for a Mediterranean city. Rain days drop to 9, 4, 3 and 8, and sunshine rises to 155, 158, 167 and 198 hours. February records only three rain days in the whole month.
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Within that window, the best month is January for rainfall — 26 millimetres — and March for sunshine hours — 198. February sits between the two and is probably the most balanced choice: 48 millimetres over three days, 167 hours of sun and relative humidity at its annual minimum of 76 %.
April is the hinge month and needs deciding carefully. It still keeps 195 hours of sun, almost March's, but rain already jumps to 160 millimetres over 12 days. It works if you accept that half the month may be wet; if not, stay in March.
04 What never changes
Against such an extreme rainfall regime, Monrovia's temperature is almost boringly stable, and that simplifies the packing. The mean high runs from 27.2 degrees in August to 31.9 in March, and the mean low moves between 22.8 and 23.9 across all twelve months. Four tenths of a degree of range in the nights of the whole year.
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The practical summary fits in two sentences. If you can choose, come between December and March, and within that span you cannot go wrong with any of the four months. If you have to come in the rainy season, pick July or August over June or September, but knowing that the trade-off is the least bright month of the year.
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