Weather Data for Journalists: Five Facts You Can Quote, How We Measure, and Who to Email

What can I quote, and how?

You can quote any figure on this page, free of charge, if you link to NomadWeather and name the dataset: NomadWeather's 2015-2025 climate averages. For a figure about one place, link to its destination page so readers can check it. We would like to hear about the piece, but you do not need to ask first.

Every number below comes from the same stored tables that run the destination pages and our guides. Nothing is typed in by hand, and nothing is a forecast. Where a number comes with a weakness, we say so in the same paragraph, because a fact you quote should survive a reader's follow-up.

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Fact 1: How many places are warm and dry in December?

Of the places we track, 15 have an average daytime high of 24°C or more in December and rain on 10% of days or fewer. Cape Verde is the driest of them, with 3 mm of rain in the month and a 27°C high, and Goa is the hottest on that list at 32°C with 21 mm. The usual beach names are missing from the list: the Thai Gulf islands and Bali are wetter in December, while Bangkok is both hot and dry at 31°C and 9 mm.

Fact 2: Does January have more warm, dry places than December?

Yes. In January, 25 of the places we track pass the same test of 24°C or more and rain on 10% of days or fewer, against 15 in December. All 15 December places stay on the list, and 10 join it: five in Central America and the Caribbean as their dry season settles in (San José and Santa Teresa in Costa Rica, Antigua in Guatemala, Panama City and Santo Domingo), two in southern Vietnam (Ho Chi Minh City and Phu Quoc), Cape Town and Lima in their summer, and Diani Beach in Kenya. The full ranking is in our January guide and the December guide.

Fact 3: What does Bali's rainy season look like in numbers?

Canggu averages 204 mm of rain in November, 288 mm in December and 313 mm in January, over 2015-2025. Those are averages across eleven years, so a single year can differ a lot. Bali's weather agency, BMKG, has said the 2026-27 rains are expected to start later than usual; what that does to the totals we cannot know yet, and we say so in our Bali 2026-27 guide. Quote the averages as "a normal year", not as this year.

Fact 4: How different are two famous beach bases in December?

Phuket has 80 mm of rain in December, and Canggu has 288 mm: more than three times as much, at almost the same 29°C high. That pairing is useful for any story about winter travel, because both places are sold as "tropical in December" and the rain behind that label is very different.

Fact 5: When is Chiang Mai's smoke worst?

Across the four seasons from 2023 to 2026, smoke in Chiang Mai was on average worst in the weeks of 12 to 18 March and 2 to 8 April. That is the pattern to quote. The model's weekly peak readings were well above the World Health Organization's 24-hour guideline of 15 µg/m³ in every season, and the model reads lower than ground monitors on the worst days, so the real peaks were higher. See the burning season guide for the weekly numbers.

How do we measure?

In three lines:

1. Source. Daily weather for 2015-2025 at one point per place, from the Open-Meteo archive (ECMWF model), averaged by calendar month. Smoke comes from the CAMS air-quality model. See data sources.
2. Rain days. A rain day is a day with at least 2 mm of rain, or 4 mm in the tropics, which is close to what a rain gauge counts. Full rules are on the methodology page.
3. Checking. Pages are drafted with AI. Software checks every number against the stored tables before a page goes live. It is data-checked, not signed off by a person.

Limits to repeat if you quote us: a model point is not a weather station, coastal and hilltop spots on the same island can differ, and averages hide bad years.

How do I reach you?

Email hello@nomadweather.com. Tell us the place, the month and your deadline, and we will send the figure with its source, usually within one working day. We can run a place or month we already track; we cannot supply forecasts or station readings.