Methodology
How we classify destinations.
Climate profiles
Each location–month combination is scored against five profiles. A row qualifies for a profile if it meets both the temperature and rainfall bounds below. A single month can match multiple profiles — for instance, a Mediterranean city in June often qualifies as both Sunny & Warm and Sunny & Mild.
| Profile | Temperature | Monthly rainfall |
|---|---|---|
| Sunny & Hot | ≥ 25°C / 77°F | ≤ 40 mm / 1.6 in |
| Sunny & Warm | ≥ 20°C / 68°F and ≤ 26°C / 78.8°F | ≤ 40 mm / 1.6 in |
| Sunny & Mild | ≥ 14°C / 57.2°F and ≤ 22°C / 71.6°F | ≤ 50 mm / 2 in |
| Tropical | ≥ 22°C / 71.6°F | ≥ 80 mm / 3.1 in |
| Snowy | and ≤ 2°C / 35.6°F | ≥ 20 mm / 0.8 in |
What counts as one row
Each row on the site represents one location in one month. Locations come in three tiers: country, subdivision (state or province), and city. Temperatures are monthly average temperatures (mean of daily averages) in degrees Celsius. Rainfall is total monthly precipitation in millimetres. The unit toggle in the header switches all displayed values to Fahrenheit and inches on the fly — the underlying data is stored in metric.
Country and subdivision values
Country and subdivision numbers are area-weighted averages across the whole territory. The Northern Territory of Australia, for example, reads as arid because the vast majority of the polygon is desert — even though its coastal capital, Darwin, is wet-tropical. Both are true statements about different things.
When country and subdivision averages diverge
The two tiers come from different sources (country data from long-term climate normals, subdivisions computed area-weighted from WorldClim rasters), so for countries with extreme geographic asymmetry — huge uninhabited interior plus a narrow populated strip — the two numbers can differ by 8–11°C in the same month.Greenland is the clearest case: 99% of the area is the ice sheet at −20°C in July, but 99% of the population lives on the +8°C coast; the country value tracks the populated coast while the subdivision average tracks the whole territory including the ice sheet. Georgia (Caucasus mountains vs populated valleys) and Pakistan (Karakoram vs Punjab/Sindh) show milder versions of the same pattern. Neither number is wrong — they answer different questions. If you're planning to travel, the city and populated-region values on those countries' pages are usually the more actionable reading.
City values
City numbers are point-value samples taken at the city's coordinates, not averaged over any surrounding region. This is usually what a traveller experiences on the ground: Darwin's coastal monsoon reads very differently from the Northern Territory's arid subdivision average, and travellers care about Darwin.
Coverage
- Countries: ~250, following the UN geoscheme.
- Subdivisions: 4,481 first-level admin divisions across ~170 countries.
- Cities: ~3,000 — every subdivision capital, every national capital, plus non-capital cities with population above 500,000.
What we don't (yet) capture
- Humidity, sunshine hours, or wind — only mean temperature and total rainfall.
- Snow versus rain split — precipitation is aggregated; when temperature is below freezing, treat it as snow.
- Year-to-year variability — these are climate normals, not weather forecasts.