How the Rains Are Going

Rain since 1 October, set against the range Lusaka's last thirty seasons actually covered — the running total, the normal band, and the recent run of seasons.

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Town Tools builds free, public tools for Lusaka 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.

This year against its own band

Days newer than the reanalysis

7 days the reanalysis has not reached yet — 12 Oct to 18 Oct — add about 0.0 mm on top.

That figure comes from a different model, which does not read rain the same way the reanalysis does. It is shown separately and is not counted in any of the figures above. Here it reads drier, not wetter: over the 2025-26 season it put about 620 mm on this square where the reanalysis put about 950 mm, so the provisional figure is more likely to be short than long.

Month by month

Through	This year	Typical	Usual range
11 Oct	6.6 mm	0.2 mm	0.0 mm – 8.2 mm
31 Oct	—	5.5 mm	1.5 mm – 36.8 mm
30 Nov	—	114.0 mm	73.8 mm – 162.7 mm
31 Dec	—	339.6 mm	225.3 mm – 430.4 mm
31 Jan	—	570.9 mm	445.1 mm – 699.8 mm
28 Feb	—	787.6 mm	628.5 mm – 971.9 mm
31 Mar	—	899.3 mm	693.1 mm – 1,086.1 mm
30 Apr	—	931.4 mm	707.5 mm – 1,125.5 mm
31 May	—	932.7 mm	707.6 mm – 1,128.2 mm
30 Jun	—	933.3 mm	708.9 mm – 1,129.0 mm
31 Jul	—	933.4 mm	709.1 mm – 1,131.5 mm
31 Aug	—	934.1 mm	709.1 mm – 1,132.5 mm
30 Sept	—	934.9 mm	709.2 mm – 1,135.0 mm

Every figure is a running total from the start of the rain year, not that month on its own.

The rain years before this one

Rain year	Total	Of typical	Percentile	Note
2025-26	951.3 mm	102%	53
2024-25	822.4 mm	88%	27
2023-24	681.7 mm	73%	7	the El Niño season: February 2024, normally the heart of the rains, brought 28 mm, and a national disaster was declared on 29 February
2022-23	1,130.0 mm	121%	87	wetter than 26 of the 30 baseline seasons
2021-22	840.0 mm	90%	30
2020-21	1,016.7 mm	109%	67
2019-20	709.7 mm	76%	10	drier than all but three of the 30 baseline seasons
2018-19	758.0 mm	81%	20

Complete rain years, read from the same reanalysis on the same day boundaries as the figures above.

What “normal” means on this page

“Normal” is this point's own record over the thirty rainfall seasons from October 1990 to September 2020 — 30 rain years, read from ERA5 (about 31 km).

Those years are lopsided: the middle one had 934.9 mm, while the average of all of them is 928.7 mm. A handful of very wet years pull the average up, which is why this page leads with the middle year rather than the average.

The driest of them had 590.6 mm (1994-95) and the wettest 1,236.4 mm (2016-17). The spread is the point: a year can be far from the middle and still be an ordinary year here.

“Normal” means this model's own baseline over the thirty rainfall seasons from October 1990 to September 2020, at this square — not an absolute truth about the town. Published estimates of the town's annual rainfall differ from each other and from this, which is why the percentage is the headline and the millimetres are not.

“Normal” on this page means this model's own thirty-season median for its square — 935 mm — which is wetter than the city's own rain gauges say. ZMD's 1991–2020 normals, as submitted to the World Meteorological Organization, are 773 mm a year at Mt Makulu, 758 mm at Lusaka City Airport and about 730–740 mm at Kenneth Kaunda International Airport. The gauges also disagree with each other: to 31 March 2026 Lusaka City had 969 mm and the international airport 697 mm, in the same season, in the same city. A figure you have seen elsewhere is not necessarily wrong; it is measured somewhere else.

The longer story

These notes are about past years. They do not describe the figure above.

What a short season looks like here

2023-24 was the driest season in this record since 1994-95. The rains came normally in December and January, then all but stopped: the model put 28 mm on Lusaka's square in February 2024, when a typical February brings well over 150 mm, and on 29 February the President declared the drought a national disaster. Maize wilted in the fields around the city, and the low water behind Kariba led to the load shedding of 2024 and 2025. Most of the season's total had already fallen, which is why the season's figure — 682 mm — looks less dramatic than the February it contained. A season's shape matters as much as its total, and the month-by-month table above is where that shows.

Where the water picture is published

Zambia Meteorological Department — seasonal rainfall forecast 2026/2027Issued 11 September 2026. It expects a very strong El Niño and below-normal rainfall for Lusaka Province over the season, with prolonged dry spells in December, January and February across the southern half of the country, and the rains ending during March. This page counts what actually falls; that is the official outlook.

ZMD — agrometeorological bulletinsEvery ten days in the season: measured rainfall at Lusaka's three stations against their normals, and the state of the crop.

ZMD — daily and weekly forecastsFor the next few days, and for severe weather. This page is a running total, not a warning service.

Open-MeteoWhere the daily figures on this page come from.