Morocco weather: what the numbers do, month by month

Morocco publishes one national weather forecast, and it is wrong in four places at once. The country is a Mediterranean coast and an Atlantic coast, a plateau in the middle with Fes and Marrakesh on it, and a mountain range with a desert behind it. Ifrane, in the Middle Atlas, averages 9.4 degrees in January and takes 961 millimetres of rain a year. Ouarzazate, below the High Atlas on a bare plateau, averages 17.3 degrees in the same month and takes 115 millimetres in the whole year.

That is the useful way to read Morocco weather: not as a national average, but as a set of towns with numbers attached.

Rain: 961 millimetres against 115, in the same season

The country has one rainy season and it runs from October to April, with the water falling in the north and the mountains and thinning out as you go south. Ifrane, in the Middle Atlas, takes about 962 millimetres across roughly 72 wet days. Fes, an hour or so down the road and about a thousand metres lower, takes about 488 across 55. Ouarzazate takes about 115 across 18, and the pre-Saharan south beyond it can go a year without anything worth recording.

The shape of the year matters more than the total. July at Fes brings 1.1 millimetres and August 4.9, so a summer trip will not be interrupted by rain in the interior. December and November are the other extreme in the north: Ifrane takes 143 millimetres in December, which is more than the desert edge sees in a whole year.

One thing to unlearn from northern Europe is what rain looks like here. It arrives in fewer, heavier events: Fes records 55 wet days for 488 millimetres, which is around nine millimetres a time, and the wet days cluster in a season rather than spreading across the year. A wet week in Marrakesh usually means several hours of rain and a lot of clear sky between them.

The mountains rearrange everything

Elevation does more to Moroccan weather than latitude does. Ifrane sits at 1,665 metres, and its average daily high never reaches 16 degrees between November and March. Fes, at 579 metres on the plain, is 20 degrees in the same months. Ouarzazate, at 1,151 metres in the dry south, is warmer than both in winter and hotter than both in summer, because the axis that matters there is desert air rather than altitude.

That produces the odd facts a weather guide is worth reading for. Ifrane, a small resort town built by the French administration in 1929 as a cool summer hill station, holds the record for the coldest temperature ever observed in Africa and the Arab world: 23.9 degrees below zero, measured on 11 February 1935. Snow is not an occasional insult to the landscape there, it is part of the winter: the town sees snow from October into the spring, and Fes averages a snowy day or two a year, with snow falling in 2005, 2006 and 2007 in a row. Ouarzazate, on a dry plateau at 1,151 metres with the Sahara beyond it, was covered in snow in February 2023.

If your route crosses the Atlas between December and March, treat the pass as the real question rather than the destination. The High Atlas holds snow above about 3,000 metres, and Tizi n’Tichka and the other crossings can close for a day or two after a storm. Ask in the town before the town, not at the barrier.

Heat, and the swing between day and night

Summer in the interior is a set of averages that are easier to respect when you can see them. Fes averages 35.1 degrees in July, Ouarzazate 38.8, Marrakesh 37.7, and the records are worse than the averages: 46.7 degrees at Fes, 44.0 at Ouarzazate, 49.6 at Marrakesh. That is the case for moving your day. Walk a medina before nine in the morning, eat, rest through the middle, and go out again after five.

The night is the other half of the number, and it is the half that catches people. Ouarzazate averages 1.8 degrees in January at dawn and 22.7 in July, and the January day behind it reaches 17.3. That is a fifteen degree swing inside a single day, twice a year apart in feel. Add the dryness and it gets sharper: the same town is at 64 per cent humidity in December and 22 per cent in July, and dry air loses heat quickly after sunset.

The desert also has a wind with a reputation. The chergui, a wind off the Sahara, can push coastal temperatures above forty degrees for two to five days in late summer and took Agadir to 50.4 degrees in August 2023. It is rare and brief, and it is the reason a coastal week in August is not automatically a cool one.

Sun, and reading a forecast that is written for the wrong town

Morocco is generous with sunlight: about 3,467 hours a year at Ouarzazate, 3,101 at Fes, 2,833 at Ifrane. The ultraviolet index at Fes reaches 11 in June and July, which is the number to pay attention to rather than the temperature, because a 24 degree day in the mountains will still burn you at altitude.

Two habits help when you read a Moroccan forecast. First, check the town rather than the region: the difference between a coastal 24 and an inland 38 is a two hour drive in some parts of the country. Second, check the night as well as the day, because the range is wider than in most of Europe, and the evening is when you will be sitting outside.