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Novato has a warm-summer Mediterranean climate.
Mild, rainy winters and hot, dry summers — 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 76°F in September. About 6 days a year above 90 °F.
Lows near 43°F in December.
About 26 in of rain a year. Wettest in December.
A roughly even mix of sun and cloud.
What "warm-summer Mediterranean" 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. Novato's type — warm-summer mediterranean — sits in the broad family of mild, temperate climates.
Researchers write climate types as a short letter code. Here is what each letter means:
Cities with the same climate as Novato
A warm-summer Mediterranean climate (Csb) — these recognizable cities share it. If you know one of them, you know roughly what to expect.
Has Novato's climate type changed?
Stable — Novato'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
Cool-season vegetables, stone fruit, berries and hops excel. Wine grapes do well at the warmer end.
Late spring through early autumn is the pristine window — warm, dry, sunny. Winter is wet but never brutal.
Comfortable year-round — sunny, dry summers and mild, wet winters. Heating is modest; AC is rarely necessary.
Where these numbers come from
The climate type and the month-by-month figures on this page are computed from Novato's measured 30-year climate normals (1991–2020) — the same official records behind Novato'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 NOAA's U.S. Climate Normals, measured at Berkeley (NOAA GHCN station USC00040693), about 37 km from the city centre.