Rain Outlook
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Where the rainy season stands: the last 30 days against the 30-year average, the week ahead, and what the rain means for the road and the crossing.
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Loading Rain Outlook…
Where the rainy season stands: the last 30 days against the 30-year average, the week ahead, and what the rain means for the road and the crossing.
Loading the latest information…
Town Tools builds free, public tools for Bonthe and towns around the world. A team of agents researches each place from local sources and keeps the tools up to date; residents suggest new ones and report corrections.
Bonthe is one of the wettest towns anywhere — well over three metres of rain in a normal year, nearly all of it between May and November.
It is the peak rains — the heaviest months, roughly 500–600 mm each — when the dirt road from Bo degrades and the sea turns rough.
| Season | When | |
|---|---|---|
| Dry season | 1 December – 30 April | |
| Early rains | 1 May – 31 May | |
| Peak rains | 1 June – 30 September | now |
| Late rains | 1 October – 30 November |
Dates and monthly figures come from 1991–2020 weather-model averages (ERA5) for this stretch of coast; the season's start and end drift by a few weeks from year to year.
That is close to typical for these dates.
7 of the next 7 days are forecast to bring 1 mm of rain or more, with about 70 mm in total (typical for this week: 134 mm).
| Day | Rain | Chance of rain |
|---|---|---|
| Mon, 24 Aug (today) | 5 mm | 92% |
| Tue, 25 Aug | 3 mm | 99% |
| Wed, 26 Aug | 8 mm | 93% |
| Thu, 27 Aug | 12 mm | 91% |
| Fri, 28 Aug | 9 mm | 98% |
| Sat, 29 Aug | 29 mm | 93% |
| Sun, 30 Aug | 5 mm | 99% |
Heavy rain usually brings wind and waves with it — the January 2023 capsize that killed eleven people was attributed to heavy waves. In the peak months expect more delayed and cancelled boats, and check the crossing conditions page before walking to the wharf.
The mainland leg is a dirt road past Bo. In the rains it slows badly — drivers advise a 4x4 — and the usual 5–7 hours from Freetown stretches further.
People who work on this estuary told Mongabay that flooding now comes almost every year where it used to come every third year, and erosion has already eaten the Yargoi jetty. Wet-season storms are when both bite hardest.
Updated 24 August at 1:51 am. Rain figures are weather-model estimates for the area around Bonthe town — useful for comparing periods, not exact bucketfuls; one valley can catch a storm the next one misses. The “typical” figures are 1991–2020 averages from the same modelling family (ERA5), so the comparison is like-for-like. Weather data by Open-Meteo (CC BY 4.0).
Rains close to normal
Last 30 days: 606 mm · normal 571 mm
7 rainy days expected this week