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Weather & Seasons

Seasons
We consider our visitor season starting in June and running through to the following March; the relevant climatic features can be described as follows:

June:	Cool and dry
July:	Cool but windy
August-October:	Cool, dry season with pleasant temperatures and excellent weather
November:	Short rains, but often unreliable running into December
December-March:	Hot season, mainly dry with showers and increasing humidity
April-May:	Long rains, very wet with heavy downpours lasting all day

Temperatures
Temperatures are mild, even when we speak of the "hot" season, as the temperature in Mafia rarely exceeds 30°C. It is the humidity level that often causes visitors to feel they are hot, especially when the breeze drops and it is very calm.

Rainfall
Mafia has a relatively dry tropical climate with approximately 1,800 mm of rain each year divided into two seasons of "long" rains in late March-May and "short" rains in November-early December.

The excellent visitor periods are August-October inclusive and early December-mid-March inclusive.

Kinasi is closed from the end of March to 1st June each year during the "long rains" (masika).

Monsoon winds
Mafia Island lies across the trade winds and experiences the north-east (Kaskazi) and south-east (Kusi) seasons. The Kaskazi usually starts at the end of November after a period of shuwali (calm) and short rains (vuli). The Kusi is the longer and windier period, running from early July through to mid-September. It is more variable than the Kaskazi and may bring strong winds and last many weeks; however, we usually expect up to six weeks of strong winds followed by a shorter period of milder winds.

Climatic conditions on Mafia through the year

MONTH	Jan	Feb	Mar	Apr	May	Jun	Jul	Aug	Sep	Oct	Nov	Dec
Average Rainfall (mm)	141	119	234	577	279	73	52	30	19	37	130	186
Humidity % (at 1500 hrs)	74	74	80	81	74	69	67	66	61	65	74	75
Temperature range (°C)	31.3	31.7	31.2	29.6	28.8	27.9	27.2	27.9	29.1	30.2	30.7	31.2
	25.4	25.3	25.3	24.5	24.2	23.3	22.6	22.4	22.6	23.6	24.1	24.8
Days with rain	6	6	11	16	12	4	5	4	3	4	8	8

Source: Tanzania Bureau of Meteorology and East African Meteorological Bureau

COUNTRY CLIMATE GUIDE: TANZANIA (from the BBC)

Tanzania is the largest country in East Africa. It is situated south of the equator between 1° and 12° S. It has a long coastline of nearly 1,000km on the Indian Ocean. It is bordered by Kenya and Uganda on the north, by Mozambique, Malawi, and Zambia on the south and by the Democratic Republic of Congo on the west. There is a fairly narrow coastal plain in the east, but most of the interior consists of a plateau 900-1,500 m/3,000-5,000 ft above sea level. There are a number of mountain ranges which rise to between 2,100-3,000 m/7,000-10,000 ft. In the north of the country the isolated peak of Mount Kilimanjaro, the highest mountain in Africa, rises to nearly 6,000 m/20,000 ft. It has a permanent snow-cap and small glaciers.

The whole country, except the higher mountains, has a tropical climate, but above 3,000 ft this is modified by a significant reduction of temperature, particularly at night. The coastal regions, including the large offshore islands of Pemba and Zanzibar, have heavier and more reliable rainfall than most of the inland areas. Average annual rainfall is almost everywhere above 1,000 mm/40 in on the coast and up to 1,500 mm/60 in in the wetter places. This compares with an annual fall of between 500-1,000 mm /20-40 in over most of the interior. Only the higher mountain areas receive more rain than the coastal region. The annual rainfall inland is notoriously unreliable and much of it is very sporadic in both time and place. Rainfall increases a little, and also becomes more reliable, towards the west and around the shores of the three great lakes which are partly included within the boundaries of Tanzania: lakes Victoria, Tanganyika, and Malawi (see the table for Kigoma on Lake Tanganyika).
Over most of the country there is a single rainy season with the heaviest falls between November and April; the period May to October is dry and sunny. The coastal region is rather an exception in that it gets some rain in all months, with the main rain falling between March and May. The southern coastal district is occasionally affected by heavy rain and strong winds associated with tropical cyclones in the south Indian Ocean.

Although weather on the coast is often rather oppressive because of the higher temperatures, particularly at night, and the high humidity, conditions here are not persistently uncomfortable thanks to regular daily sea breezes. Inland, the lower humidity and cooler night temperatures mean that heat stress is rare although daytime temperatures are quite high and sunshine abundant. Much of Tanzania has a very sunny climate with many places averaging from seven to ten hours of sunshine a day with fewer hours during the rainy season. As in most other tropical countries the year is usually divided into the rainy and dry seasons, since the terms winter and summer have little meaning in respect of temperature.

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