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Rabat month by month — at a glance
Hover each month for the summary. Click to pin it.
01 Twenty degrees of gap
Key moments at a glance
17.9 mm, 290 hours of sun and 23.6 °C, without high heatwave risk.
13.7 mm over fewer than two rain days, with 261 hours of sun.
Only 0.4 mm of rain, but the month's record is 47.2 °C.
94.3 mm over 7.4 days and sunshine back down to 190 hours.
The explanation for the mild part is the ocean. Rabat is on the Atlantic coast, and the sea breeze keeps temperature contained for almost the whole year. The mean high does not fall below 17.4 degrees in January nor rise above 27.8 in August: ten degrees of range across twelve months, a notably narrow band.
The lows follow and are just as moderate: from 7.2 degrees in January to 18.3 in August. With those figures, and adding 2,916 hours of sunshine a year, the city's climate resembles that of a southern European Mediterranean capital more than that of a North African city.
02 The wind that changes the equation
The thermometer can go from twenty-five degrees to over forty in a few hours. It is not the summer: it is the wind.
The chergui is a dry easterly and southeasterly wind arriving from the Saharan interior. When it settles in, it abruptly cuts the sea-breeze circulation that keeps the coast mild, and hot continental air takes its place. That is the mechanism that produces the records in the table.
The effect is especially abrupt in Atlantic cities like Rabat, precisely because they are the ones that depend most on the sea for their mild climate. In a chergui episode, temperature can climb from around twenty-five degrees to over forty within hours, and hold for several days.
The practical consequence is that the annual mean is not enough for planning summer here. July and August have excellent numbers on paper — 0.4 and 0.6 millimetres of rain, 315 and 307 hours of sun — but they are also the months when a chergui episode is most likely.
03 A Mediterranean winter
The rainfall regime is the classic Mediterranean one, with a winter maximum and near-total summer drought. The annual total is 521.9 millimetres over barely 51.8 rain days, concentrated between October and March: November 94.3, December 90.2, January 80.9.
Summer is almost absolutely dry: 3.6 millimetres in June, 0.4 in July and 0.6 in August, with 0.2 and 0.3 rain days in the last two. Put another way, between June and August it rains an average of little more than one day in total.
Winter is not cold but it is grey and humid for what the latitude suggests. In December and January sunshine drops to 181 and 180 hours a month, relative humidity rises to 83 % and 82 %, and the mean high stops at 18.6 and 17.4 degrees. It is pleasant for walking, but it is not terrace weather.
04 Which month to pick
The two best windows are spring and early autumn, and for the same reason: they give almost all of summer's advantages without its main risk. May is the calendar's best month — 17.9 millimetres, 290 hours of sun and 23.6 degrees by day — and September follows closely, with 13.7 millimetres and 261 hours of sunshine.
April and June work just as well with nuances: April adds up to 42.3 millimetres but already 254 hours of sun, and June drops to 3.6 millimetres with 288 hours and 25.6 degrees. October is a pleasant surprise: 54.9 millimetres but 235 hours of sun and 24.8 degrees by day.
The months to avoid are November, December and January, for the combination of rain, low light and high humidity: 94.3, 90.2 and 80.9 millimetres with sunshine around 180-190 hours. And July and August deserve a different warning from the usual: on paper they are perfect, but they are the months when the chergui can appear. If you travel then, it is worth watching the forecast in the preceding week.
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