Rain outlook
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Where the rainy season stands against the 30-year average, and the week ahead — for fish drying, the M5 and the lake.
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Loading the latest information…
Loading Rain outlook…
Where the rainy season stands against the 30-year average, and the week ahead — for fish drying, the M5 and the lake.
Loading the latest information…
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Nkhata Bay gets nearly all of its rain between November and April — the station's long-term figure is about 1,657 mm a year. The rains decide more than umbrellas here: they interrupt fish drying, cut the M5, and rough up the lake.
It is the dry season — may tapers quickly; June through September are the dry months — the easy season for fish drying and for the roads. October warms up, and the first storms often arrive before the calendar says they should.
| Season | When | |
|---|---|---|
| Rainy season | 1 November – 30 April | |
| Dry season | 1 May – 31 October | now |
Season dates and monthly shapes come from 1991–2020 weather-model averages (ERA5) for the grid cell nearest town, which run wetter than the town's long-term station figure — trust the shape of the year more than any exact millimetre count, and expect the boundaries to drift by weeks from year to year.
That is close to typical for these dates.
2 of the next 7 days are forecast to bring 1 mm of rain or more, with about 7 mm in total (typical for this week: 5 mm).
| Day | Rain | Chance of rain |
|---|---|---|
| Mon, 24 Aug (today) | 0 mm | 6% |
| Tue, 25 Aug | 0 mm | 4% |
| Wed, 26 Aug | 0 mm | 0% |
| Thu, 27 Aug | 1 mm | 53% |
| Fri, 28 Aug | 3 mm | 75% |
| Sat, 29 Aug | 3 mm | 59% |
| Sun, 30 Aug | 0 mm | 10% |
Rain interrupting usipa drying is a documented pressure point — it is what pushed some processors toward an illegal pesticide shortcut exposed in October 2025. The fisheries office's answer is salting and proper drying; the dry months are the forgiving season.
The M5 lakeshore road south is the rainy season's casualty — rains in late December 2025 cut off the Northern Region for at least four days. The rebuilt Mzuzu road holds up better.
The rainy months are also the rough months on the water, when sailings are likeliest to be delayed or cancelled. The lake crossing page on this site reads the wind over the open water day by day.
Updated 24 August at 4:53 am. Rain figures are weather-model estimates for the area around Nkhata Bay 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: 21 mm · normal 22 mm
2 rainy days expected this week