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Sapporo has a hot-summer humid continental climate.
Hot, humid summers. Genuinely cold winters with snow. Rain in every month — here's what that means in plain terms.
What this climate feels like
The four things a regular visitor actually wants to know:
Highs near 80°F in August.
Lows near 20°F in January.
About 45 in of rain a year. Wettest in September.
Overcast skies dominate much of the year.
What "hot-summer humid continental" means
Climate scientists sort every place on Earth into about 30 climate types, based on how hot, cold, wet and dry it is across the year. Sapporo's type — hot-summer humid continental — sits in the broad family of four-season continental climates.
Researchers write climate types as a short letter code. Here is what each letter means:
Cities with the same climate as Sapporo
A hot-summer humid continental climate (Dfa) — these recognizable cities share it. If you know one of them, you know roughly what to expect.
Sapporo sits near a climate boundary
This city sits right on the line between hot-summer humid continental and the next type along. Different climate maps file it on different sides of that line; the lived weather doesn't change at the line — it's a naming boundary, not a wall.
Has Sapporo's climate type changed?
Stable — Sapporo's climate has held the same type between the 1971–2000 and 1991–2020 normals. The label is steady; the climate beneath it is still warming.
What this climate means for you
Hardy perennials, stone fruit, sweet corn — the long warm summers support a full vegetable garden. Winter shuts everything down for months.
Late spring through early autumn is the comfortable window. Winter is genuinely cold; summer is hot and sometimes humid.
A real four-season climate — heating-heavy winters and AC-heavy summers. Big swings keep wardrobes busy.
Where these numbers come from
The climate type and the month-by-month figures on this page are computed from Sapporo's measured 30-year climate normals (1991–2020) — the same official records behind Sapporo's main climate page, so the two always agree.
Long-range climate maps measure things slightly differently and can place a city in a neighbouring category. Where they differ, this page uses the measured station record as the climate today.
Methodology & sources
Temperature & precipitation — the official 1991–2020 climate normals from the Japan Meteorological Agency, measured at Sapporo, about 2 km from the city centre.