Where the rainy season stands: the last 30 days against the long-term average, the week ahead, and what rain means for roads and herds.
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Opuwo gets nearly all of its roughly 450 mm of yearly rain between November and April, with the heart of the season in January–March. The rest of the year is reliably dry — months can pass without a drop. This page tracks where the season stands: the last 30 days against the long-term average, and the week ahead.
It is the dry season — no rain at all for months is normal — a dry page here in winter is the season working as usual, not a drought signal.
| Season | When | |
|---|---|---|
| Dry season | 1 May – 31 October | now |
| Rainy season | 1 November – 30 April |
Season edges drift year to year: the first storms can arrive any time from late October, and in drought years the rains largely fail. Around 450 mm a year on average, almost all of it November–April, with January–March the wettest months.
These are usually dry weeks, and they have been.
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 | 0% |
| Sat 11 Jul | 0 mm | 0% |
| Sun 12 Jul | 0 mm | 0% |
| Mon 13 Jul | 0 mm | 0% |
| Tue 14 Jul | 0 mm | 0% |
| Wed 15 Jul | 0 mm | 0% |
| Thu 16 Jul | 0 mm | 0% |
Kaokoland's cattle and goats live on what the rains grow. Failed seasons push families and herds toward town — the drought years around 2019 did exactly that. The figures here are weather-model estimates for watching the season; they are not a drought declaration, which comes from the government.
The tar ends at Opuwo. North and west of town the gravel — including the C43 toward Epupa Falls — degrades quickly in the rains, and dry riverbeds can flow without warning. Between January and April, ask locally about road conditions before heading deep into Kaokoland.
Opuwo's town water comes from NamWater boreholes, not from rainfall directly — the April 2025 floods actually damaged the supply system. A wet month on this page says little about water pressure in town.
Updated 10 July at 0:26. Rain figures are weather-model estimates for the area around central Opuwo — 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).