Nepal Weather & Climate FAQ: Average Temperature, Seasons, Records

Nepal packs an extraordinary range of climates into a strip of land averaging less than 200 km from north to south. Elevation rises from about 60 m above sea level at Kechana Kalan in Jhapa district to 8,848.86 m at the summit of Sagarmatha (Mount Everest), so conditions shift from hot subtropical plains in the Tarai, through temperate mid-hills, to alpine and permanently frozen (nival) zones along the high Himalaya. Any single 'Nepal weather' number therefore hides enormous local variation, and most fast facts on this page come with a region or station attached.

The official authority for weather and climate data is the Department of Hydrology and Meteorology (DHM), a government agency under the Ministry of Energy, Water Resources and Irrigation, headquartered at Babarmahal, Kathmandu. DHM operates the national network of meteorological stations, issues forecasts, declares monsoon onset and withdrawal, and publishes the annual 'State of the Climate of Nepal' report.

When this page says 'normal' or 'average', it means DHM's climatological normals for the 30-year reference period 1991–2020 (roughly BS 2047–2077), the same baseline DHM uses in its own reports. DHM treats annual precipitation within ±10 percent of the normal as near-normal and temperature anomalies within ±0.2°C as normal — useful thresholds when you read headlines about a 'dry winter' or a 'hot June'.

Averaged across DHM's station network, Nepal's annual temperature normals for 1991–2020 work out to about 27.3°C for the daily maximum and about 15.1°C for the daily minimum. These figures come directly from DHM's Nepal Climate Summary 2023, which reported the 2023 country-averaged maximum of 27.9°C as 0.6°C above normal and the minimum of 15.6°C as 0.5°C above normal. A crude midpoint of roughly 21°C is sometimes quoted as Nepal's mean temperature, but note that DHM's stations are concentrated in the inhabited lowlands and mid-hills, so the national average leans warm.

Regional contrasts are stark. DHM's State of the Climate of Nepal 2024 shows annual average maximum temperatures above 30°C across the southern Tarai but below 9°C in the far north; in 2024 the highest station-averaged annual maximum was 31.5°C at Semari (Nawalparasi West) and the lowest was 17.7°C at Jomsom (Mustang), while annual minimums ranged from 19.7°C at Janakpur Airport down to 5.1°C at Thakmarpha in Mustang.

For Kathmandu (valley floor at roughly 1,300–1,400 m), typical station values put January — the coldest month — at daytime highs around 19°C and nighttime lows of about 2–3°C, while monsoon-season days from June to August reach about 28–29°C with muggy nights near 20°C. The Kathmandu Valley has a humid subtropical (Köppen Cwa) climate with dry winters, which is why winter mornings are foggy and frosty even though afternoons feel mild.

Meteorologically, Nepal has four seasons as defined by DHM: winter (December–February), pre-monsoon (March–May), monsoon (June–September) and post-monsoon (October–November). These are the divisions used in every official DHM climate bulletin and seasonal outlook, and they map neatly onto what most people experience: a cold dry winter, a hot dusty pre-monsoon with thunderstorms, a warm wet monsoon, and a clear stable autumn.

Tradition counts six seasons (ritu) of two Nepali months each, a system inherited from the Hindu calendar and still used in school books and festivals: Basanta (spring), Grishma (early summer), Barkha or Varsha (the rainy season), Sharad (early autumn), Hemanta (late autumn) and Shishir (winter). So both common answers — 'four' and 'six' — are correct, depending on whether the question is about the meteorological or the traditional calendar.

The hinge of the whole year is the summer monsoon. DHM's climatological normal has the monsoon entering eastern Nepal on 13 June and withdrawing on 2 October, a normal duration of 112 days. Recent years have run long: in 2023 the monsoon arrived on 14 June and withdrew on 15 October (124 days), and in 2024 it arrived on 10 June and withdrew on 12 October (125 days).

Nepal's country-averaged annual precipitation is roughly 1,600–1,900 mm, depending on the period and station set used. DHM's Nepal Climate Summary 2023 reported a national total of 1,570.4 mm for that year and called it 91.2 percent of normal — implying a 1991–2020 station-network normal of about 1,720 mm — while the widely cited long-term research figure based on 1971–2012 data is about 1,857.6 mm. In 2024, DHM recorded 111.1 percent of normal precipitation nationally, an above-normal year.

Rainfall is extremely seasonal. The June–September monsoon delivers close to 80 percent of the annual total, with July normally the wettest month; DHM-based analyses put the seasonal split at roughly 78 percent monsoon, 15 percent pre-monsoon, 4–5 percent post-monsoon and only 2–3 percent winter. Winter rain comes mainly from westerly disturbances and matters greatly for winter crops and mountain snowpack — the winter of 2023–24 brought just 19.8 percent of normal winter precipitation, a severe deficit.

Geography drives huge local differences. Lumle in Kaski district, on the southern flank of the Annapurna range near Pokhara, is Nepal's wettest recording station, logging 4,625.9 mm in 2023 and 4,572.7 mm in 2024, and averaging around 5,000 mm or more in wet years. In the trans-Himalayan rain shadow, Jomsom in Mustang recorded just 337.6 mm in 2024, and Upper Mustang sites are drier still — which is why Mustang is often called Nepal's cold desert.

On the Kathmandu Valley floor, snowfall is extremely rare — rare enough to make national news. The last snowfall recorded in the lowlands of the valley was on 14 February 2007 (Falgun 2063 BS), when a brief flurry linked to a westerly disturbance dusted the city for the first time in about 63 years; media reports at the time noted Kathmandu had not seen snow since January 1944 (BS 2000). The 2007 event lasted only minutes in most neighbourhoods, though the airport weather station observed it for about 45 minutes.

The hills ringing the valley are a different story. On 28 February 2019, snow fell on Phulchowki (2,782 m), Chandragiri, Nagarkot, Shivapuri and Tarebhir, along with parts of Bhaktapur, Kirtipur and Lalitpur — reported as the valley's first snowfall in 12 years. In cold, moist winters the rim hills, especially Phulchowki and Chandragiri, can pick up snow, and Kathmandu residents routinely ride the Chandragiri cable car or drive to Phulchowki after a strong winter storm to see it.

The reason city-level snow is so rare is that Kathmandu's cold and its moisture rarely coincide: winter is the driest season, and by the time a moisture-bearing westerly system arrives, daytime valley temperatures (typically 17–19°C) are usually too warm. January nights average only about 2–3°C, producing frost and dense fog rather than snow.

The highest air temperature ever recorded in Nepal is 46.4°C at Dhangadhi in Kailali district, in the far-western Tarai, in June 1995 (BS 2052), according to DHM's extreme-temperature records. Dhangadhi and the surrounding western Tarai remain Nepal's hottest belt: temperatures there exceed 40°C almost every year, and on 30 May 2024 Nepalgunj set its own all-time station record of 44.2°C during a prolonged heat wave.

The lowest temperature in DHM's standard station record is −15.0°C, measured at Jumla in Karnali on 2 February 1975 (Magh 2031 BS). This is a record for conventional monitoring stations, which sit in inhabited valleys; the unmonitored high Himalaya is far colder, with summit-zone temperatures on peaks like Sagarmatha routinely estimated below −30°C in winter.

Nepal's rainfall record was rewritten recently. On 8 July 2024 (Asar 2081 BS), Dodhara station in Kanchanpur district measured 624.0 mm of rain in 24 hours — a new national record for daily precipitation — surpassing the 516.2 mm recorded at Hetauda N.F.I. station on 13 August 2017. Heat records are also falling fast: DHM counted 50 days with temperatures above 40°C somewhere in Nepal in 2024, and in 2023 twelve stations, including Dumkauli in Nawalparasi-East (44.8°C on 8–9 June), broke their all-time daily maximum records.

Yes — the warming signal in Nepal's observational record is clear and fast. DHM's Observed Climate Trend Analysis (1971–2014), published in 2017, found the all-Nepal annual maximum temperature rising at 0.056°C per year, or roughly 0.56°C per decade, with the strongest warming in the pre-monsoon-to-monsoon transition. Warming is elevation-dependent: high mountain districts warmed at up to 0.086°C per year while Tarai districts warmed at about 0.021°C per year, meaning the fragile Himalayan zone is heating fastest.

Recent DHM annual reports confirm the trend. The country-averaged maximum temperature in 2023 and 2024 ranked among the hottest since records began in 1981, and 2024 produced the highest country-averaged minimum temperature since 1981 — nights are warming markedly. Precipitation shows no strong long-term trend in total volume, but extremes are intensifying, as the 2024 national 24-hour rainfall record and the 49 stations that broke daily rainfall records that year illustrate. The monsoon has also run longer than its 112-day normal in both 2023 and 2024.

For forecasts, warnings and real-time data, the primary sources are DHM (dhm.gov.np) and its Meteorological Forecasting Division, which publish daily forecasts, seasonal outlooks, monsoon onset declarations and rainfall-watch maps. For climate baselines, DHM's climatological normals, the annual Nepal Climate Summary and the State of the Climate of Nepal reports are the authoritative references, and all figures on this page trace back to them or to reporting that cites them.

This FAQ is part of amarnepal.com's weather-normals coverage. For the full picture behind these fast facts, see the site's Nepal climate normals and weather hub (the 1991–2020 baseline explained), the monsoon calendar page with normal onset and withdrawal dates by region, and the month-by-month best-time-to-visit guide. Nepal's warming trends, glacier retreat and climate projections are covered in more depth on the site's climate-change pages.