Home › Cities › Bolivia › La Paz › Tools › Climate zone
La Paz has a cold subtropical highland climate.
Hot, wet summers and cool, dry 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 16°C in December.
Lows near −4°C in July. About 135 freezing nights a year.
About 576 mm of rain a year. Wettest in January.
A roughly even mix of sun and cloud.
What "cold subtropical highland" 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. La Paz's type — cold subtropical highland — sits in the broad family of mild, temperate climates.
Researchers write climate types as a short letter code. Here is what each letter means:
Has La Paz's climate type changed?
A climate type is a coarse bucket. It can hold steady for years while the weather inside it shifts — or tip into the next bucket.
What this climate means for you
Hardy potatoes, quinoa, oats — only highland-adapted crops.
The dry winter is the clear-sky window despite the cold. Bring layers; UV is intense.
Thin air, cool year-round. Heating is constant; the sun is strong despite the cold.
Where these numbers come from
The climate type and the month-by-month figures on this page are computed from La Paz's measured 30-year climate normals (1991–2020) — the same official records behind La Paz'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 27 years of daily observations at EL Alto Intl, a weather station, about 5 km from the city centre. The underlying daily records come from NOAA's global station network.