Nairobi month by month — at a glance
Hover each month for the summary. Click to pin it.
01 One thousand seven hundred and ninety-five metres
Key moments at a glance
288 hours of sun and 58.3 mm over just four rain days.
226 hours of sun and 60.8 mm, just before the short rains arrive.
24.0 mm of rain and only 127 hours of sun, with a 9.1 °C low.
242.3 mm over 15 days: the wettest month of the long rains.
The temperature series is deceptively flat at the top and very active at the bottom. The mean high runs from 22.0 degrees in July to 27.7 in March, barely five and seven tenths of a degree of range. The low, by contrast, moves between 9.1 in August and 14.0 in April: almost five degrees, and in the range where it genuinely tells.
The practical effect is that Nairobi is travelled in layers, not in tropical clothing. At midday you are in short sleeves and at seven in the morning, in the cool half of the year, it is genuinely cold. Nobody arrives expecting that from a city one degree from the equator, and it is the most common packing mistake.
02 Two rains, not one
The water arrives in two separate batches. The long season runs from March to May, with 92.2, 242.3 and 189.5 millimetres; the short one, November and December, with 149.6 and 107.6. Between them and around them lie the dry months: January, February, June, July, August, September and October.
July is the month with the least rain in the year, 17.6 millimetres, and also the second with the least sun. Here dry and sunny are not synonyms.
The annual total is about 1,061 millimetres over some ninety rain days, and the year adds up to about 2,492 hours of sunshine. Compared with other capitals at the same latitude, it is a dry, bright city: altitude and its position in the lee of the highlands shelter it from the humidity coming off the Indian Ocean.
03 The dry month that does not suit
Here is the calendar's trap. On paper, July is the best month of the year: 17.6 millimetres of rain over three days, the absolute minimum. On the ground it is another matter. July and August are the two months with the fewest hours of sunshine — 130.2 and 127.1 — far below January's 288.
What happens in those months is a persistent layer of low cloud that neither breaks nor clears. The result is a dry, cool, grey period: highs of 22.0 and 22.7 degrees, lows of 9.2 and 9.1, and whole weeks of flat light. For walking the city it is fine; for photographing the landscape, far less so.
04 Which month to pick
January and February are the calendar's two best months, and it is not close: 58.3 and 49.8 millimetres over four rain days each, 288 and 266 hours of sunshine, and highs of 25.5 and 26.7 degrees with nights at 12.7. Little rain, plenty of light and comfortable temperatures at any hour.
September and October are the other good window, at 31.2 and 60.8 millimetres with sunshine climbing from 180 to 226 hours. It is when the July-and-August cloud layer breaks up, and before the short rains of November arrive. March still works, though the rain is already organising itself.
The ones to dodge are April, May and November: 242.3, 189.5 and 149.6 millimetres, between thirteen and fifteen rain days a month. And July and August deserve the opposite of the usual warning: they are dry, yes, but also the greyest and the coldest by night of the whole year. If you are coming for the landscape, they are not your months.
