Where the rains stand: the last 30 days against the 30-year average for Isiolo, the week ahead, and the long-rains/short-rains calendar.
Town Tools builds free, public tools for Isiolo 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.
Two short rainy seasons separated by long dry spells decide pasture, milk and water distances here. This page shows how the last 30 days compare with the 30-year average for the same dates, and what the weather model expects this week.
It is the long dry season — strong dry winds and dust through town from June to August; distances to water and pasture lengthen.
| Season | When | |
|---|---|---|
| Short dry spell | 1 January – 29 February | |
| Long rainsMAM season | 1 March – 31 May | |
| Long dry season | 1 June – 30 September | now |
| Short rainsOND season | 1 October – 31 December |
Season boundaries follow NDMA's seasonal calendar for Isiolo, checked against 1991–2020 ERA5 monthly averages for this grid point (about 555 mm a year). Onsets drift: the 2026 long rains arrived in late February, and the 2025 short rains underperformed badly.
That is far less rain than is typical for these dates.
No day this week is forecast to bring 1 mm of rain or more.
| Day | Rain | Chance of rain |
|---|---|---|
| Fri 10 Jul (today) | 0 mm | 4% |
| Sat 11 Jul | 0 mm | 0% |
| Sun 12 Jul | 0 mm | 2% |
| Mon 13 Jul | 0 mm | 0% |
| Tue 14 Jul | 0 mm | 2% |
| Wed 15 Jul | 0 mm | 0% |
| Thu 16 Jul | 0 mm | 0% |
The livestock sales yard runs Monday, Wednesday and Friday all year. NDMA's bulletins read prices and rain together — by the May 2026 bulletin the March–May long rains had restored pasture, body condition and milk, and the county drought phase had returned to Normal.
Town supply is rationed in dry spells — the water company points to uncontrolled upstream abstraction and damaged infrastructure. In May 2026, after the long rains recharged rivers and pans, a 20-litre jerrican cost Ksh 2–5 at community water kiosks (about Ksh 20 from vendors at Modogashe's traditional river wells), and households walked about 1.4 km return to water — well below the seasonal norm. Both cost and distance climb again through the June–September dry spell.
NDMA classifies the county every month — Normal, Alert, Alarm, Emergency — and the phase moves with these rains. As of the May 2026 bulletin the county was Normal and improving. The livestock price board on this site shows the current phase from the latest bulletin.
Updated 10 July at 0:02. Rain figures are weather-model estimates for the area around Isiolo 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).