Moremi weather and climate

Hot days in every month; the nights are the story.

Moremi's days run warm to hot all year; it is the nights that separate the seasons. In the summer wet season, November to March, afternoons typically reach 32–33 °C and the nights stay warm, around 21 °C, with enough humidity to make both feel more. The heat peaks just before the rains: October is typically the hottest month, afternoons around 36 °C, and days near 40 °C occur. Winter is a different country. From May to August the afternoons are mild, about 26–29 °C under clear skies, but the air dries out and the heat leaves the ground fast after dark, so a June or July dawn is typically around 9 °C, and a few nights each winter fall to freezing.

On the ground it works like this. In winter you leave camp in the dark in a fleece and a beanie, a blanket over your knees in the open vehicle, and are down to a shirt by ten. In summer the morning drive is the cool part of the day; the middle of the day belongs to the shade and the pool, and the afternoon drive goes out under a sky building towards the evening storm.

One wet season, and a dry season that means it.

Rain comes to Moremi in a single summer season, mostly as afternoon thunderstorms. The first storms typically break in November, January and February are the wettest months at around 95–105 mm each, and the rain eases through March; by April the totals are small, and from May to September a typical year brings almost none. Around 450 mm falls in an average year, nearly all of it between November and March, and the total swings widely from one summer to the next. Summer rain here is rarely a day of drizzle: a hot, still morning, cloud building through the afternoon, a hard storm at four or five, and a washed, cool evening.

Humidity follows the rain — well over half through the summer months, dropping to a quarter or so by September, when the air is at its driest and the dust hangs in the late-afternoon light. The storms have consequences on the ground too: sustained rain can cut tracks in the reserve for days, and some camps close for part of the wet season. The water that fills the delta side of the reserve is not this rain — it stands highest in June, July and August, when the skies here have been dry for months.

Twelve months, stated plainly.

Here is the climate as long-run typicals, not a forecast. Average daytime high and pre-dawn low over the last three decades, typical rainfall and the number of days on which rain falls, for each month. The figures are those recorded at Maun, the nearest long-run weather station, about a hundred kilometres south-west of the reserve; Moremi runs close to them. Read them as the shape of the year rather than a prediction for your dates — any given week can sit well off its average, and summer rainfall in particular varies widely.

Warm for the dawn, light for the day.

Pack for the swing, not the average. A winter dawn in an open vehicle is properly cold: a fleece or light down jacket, a beanie, gloves and a scarf go in the bag for any trip between May and September, and come off by mid-morning. Summer asks the opposite — light, breathable clothing that dries fast, a packable rain shell for the afternoon storm, and repellent for the evenings. Sun cover is the constant: a brimmed hat, sunglasses and a high-factor sunscreen in every month, because the light here is strong even in winter.

Colours, quantities and the soft-bag rule are the packing list's business; the climate only settles which end of the year you are dressing for.