Where the rains stand
The two rainy seasons, the last 30 days against the 30-year average, and the week ahead — with what heavy rain means for the lake, the power and the taps.
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The two rainy seasons, the last 30 days against the 30-year average, and the week ahead — with what heavy rain means for the lake, the power and the taps.
Jinja sits almost on the equator, where the Nile leaves Lake Victoria, and the rain comes in two seasons rather than one — the long rains around March to May, then the short rains from September into December, with calmer spells in between. No month here is truly dry. This page shows where the season actually stands: the last 30 days against the 30-year average for the same dates, and what the weather model expects in the week ahead.
It is the drier middle of the year — the quietest spell, with July usually the lightest month — though even then rain rarely stops for long.
| Season | When | |
|---|---|---|
| Calmer start of the year | 1 January – 28 February | |
| Long rains | 1 March – 31 May | |
| Drier middle of the year | 1 June – 31 August | now |
| Short rains | 1 September – 31 December |
Jinja averages around 2,100 mm of rain a year, spread across two wet peaks; with a tropical-rainforest (Af) climate no month is genuinely dry. The season edges drift by a few weeks from year to year, and the figures below are 1991–2020 weather-model averages for this area, not rain-gauge readings.
That is noticeably less rain than is typical for these dates.
3 of the next 7 days are forecast to bring 1 mm of rain or more, with about 11 mm in total (typical for this week: 32 mm).
| Day | Rain | Chance of rain |
|---|---|---|
| Sun 14 Jun (today) | 0 mm | 27% |
| Mon 15 Jun | 0 mm | 28% |
| Tue 16 Jun | 0 mm | 15% |
| Wed 17 Jun | 0 mm | 8% |
| Thu 18 Jun | 3 mm | 76% |
| Fri 19 Jun | 2 mm | 69% |
| Sat 20 Jun | 5 mm | 57% |
A season can finish near its normal total and still arrive in the wrong weeks. Comparing the last 30 days to the 1991–2020 average for those same dates shows whether the rain is running ahead, behind, or about on time right now. The comparison is purely arithmetic — this page does not give planting or flood advice.
Lake Victoria rises on months of rain across its whole basin, not just on what falls in Jinja — so a wet spell here is one signal, not the whole picture. In May 2024 the lake reached a 128-year high and water submerged Masese Landing Site, stranding more than 1,600 people. When the long rains are heavy, treat the landing-site and lakeshore areas with caution and listen for council and radio announcements.
A heavy storm often takes the power with it, and NWSC's Masese pumps run on that same grid — so a stormy stretch can mean both the lights and the taps go quiet. The 'Is the power out?' board and the 'Who to call' numbers are the pages for that when it happens.
Updated 14 June at 11:43. Rain figures are weather-model estimates for the area around central Jinja — 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).