Rains & seasons
Where Moshi's rains stand — the last 30 days against the long-term average and the week ahead — for the farm, the coffee and the climb.
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Where Moshi's rains stand — the last 30 days against the long-term average and the week ahead — for the farm, the coffee and the climb.
Moshi has two rainy seasons and two dry ones, and the farming year, the coffee crop and the climb all turn on them. This shows where the rains stand right now — the last 30 days against the long-term average, and the week ahead.
It is the long dry season — the cool, dusty dry months
| Season | When | |
|---|---|---|
| Dry spell between the rains | 1 January – 29 February | |
| Long rainsmasika | 1 March – 31 May | |
| Long dry season | 1 June – 30 September | now |
| Short rainsvuli | 1 October – 31 December |
The start and end of each season shift from year to year, and recent years have been less predictable — treat this as the usual pattern, not a promise. For the season ahead and any warnings, the Tanzania Meteorological Authority (TMA, meteo.go.tz) is the authority.
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 3 mm in total (typical for this week: 7 mm).
| Day | Rain | Chance of rain |
|---|---|---|
| Sat 20 Jun (today) | 1 mm | 100% |
| Sun 21 Jun | 2 mm | 96% |
| Mon 22 Jun | 0 mm | 11% |
| Tue 23 Jun | 0 mm | 94% |
| Wed 24 Jun | 0 mm | 98% |
| Thu 25 Jun | 0 mm | 76% |
| Fri 26 Jun | 0 mm | 39% |
Maize and beans are planted at the onset of each rains — around October for the vuli crop and February or March for the masika crop, with the harvest a few months later. A late start or a short rains season is the real risk, which is why the comparison with the average matters more than any single rainy day.
Kilimanjaro arabica flowers when the first rains return after a dry spell, and the cherries ripen over the months that follow into the main mid-year harvest. Too little rain at flowering, or too much at harvest, both hurt the crop.
The trails are muddiest and cloudiest in the long rains (late March to May). The clearest, driest climbing is in the long dry season (late June to October) and again in January and February. The mountain makes its own weather, though, so a dry forecast in town is no guarantee high up.
As the rains stop, the air over Moshi turns dusty and stays that way until they return. The 'Air & dust' tool on the town page tracks that day by day.
Updated 20 June at 7:04. Rain figures are weather-model estimates for the area around central Moshi — 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).