San Salvador month by month
Figures from Ilopango airport for 1991-2020: around 1,781 mm a year, highs from 29.7 to 33.2 °C and lows from 17.5 to 20.9 °C. Four months of the year hold more than half of all the water.
01 Two seasons, no degrees
The capital’s highs run from 29.7 °C in October to 33.2 °C in March. Lows go from 17.5 to 20.9 °C. In other words: three and a half degrees separate the coolest month from the hottest, distributed with no hemispheric logic at all.
With those numbers, talking about winter and summer in terms of temperature is useless. That is why local usage applies them to something else: winter is the rainy season, May to October, and summer is the dry one, November to April. The opposite of what you expect.
02 The May cut
The change is not gradual, it is a jump. April brings about 42 mm; May, about 193. It multiplies more than fourfold in four weeks, and from then on the country does not dry out again until late October.
The same happens at the other end. From October’s 245 mm you drop to November’s 65 and December’s 5.6. January and February are, quite simply, rainless months: one or two millimetres in thirty days.
03 How it rains here
In winter the pattern is fairly reliable: clear, hot mornings, cloud building over the volcanoes towards midday and a heavy storm mid-afternoon, sometimes with hail. It usually lasts an hour or two and then clears.
What complicates travel is not the daily rain but the long spells, which arrive when a tropical system crosses Central America. Then it can rain for several days and the serious problems appear: landslides on the slopes and closed roads, above all in September and October.
04 The month nobody books
November is the calendar’s best secret. The rain has stopped, but the landscape still keeps the green of six months of water, and the air is clean before dry-season dust clouds everything.
That detail matters more than it seems in a city ringed by volcanoes: in November they stand out sharply from the valley, and by March they usually sit behind a grey haze. If you come for the landscape, the difference between those two months is enormous.
Key moments at a glance
Dry, still green and with the volcanoes visible.
One or two millimetres a month and cool nights for the region.
The hottest months, at 33 °C and with poor visibility.
More than 1,400 mm in five months and landslide risk.
05 Verdict
Go in November or December. The dry season is already in place, the landscape is still green, the volcanoes are clear and none of March’s extreme heat applies. It is the year’s best combination, by a distance.
January and February work almost as well, with a drier landscape. March and April only if the heat does not bother you. And from May to September, only with flexible plans: afternoons belong to the rain and mountain roads can let you down.
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