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Estes Park has a mediterranean-influenced subarctic climate.
Short, cool summers and long, cold winters — 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 72°F in July.
Lows near 6°F in December. About 243 freezing nights a year.
About 39 in of rain a year. Wettest in January.
A roughly even mix of sun and cloud.
What "mediterranean-influenced subarctic" 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. Estes Park's type — mediterranean-influenced subarctic — 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 Estes Park
A mediterranean-influenced subarctic climate (Dsc) — these recognizable cities share it. If you know one of them, you know roughly what to expect.
Estes Park sits near a climate boundary
This city sits right on the line between mediterranean-influenced subarctic 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 Estes Park's climate type changed?
Stable — Estes Park'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
A very short growing season; heating dominates the year.
Where these numbers come from
The climate type and the month-by-month figures on this page are computed from Estes Park's measured 30-year climate normals (1991–2020) — the same official records behind Estes Park'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 — 1991–2020 normals computed from 30 years of daily observations at Columbine, a weather station, about 91 km from the city centre. The underlying daily records come from NOAA's global station network.