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Mādabā has a cold desert climate.

Long, dry summers. Real winter cold. Almost no rain — here's what that means in plain terms.

Cold desertKöppen BWk

What this climate feels like

The four things a regular visitor actually wants to know:

☀️
Summers
Hot

Highs near 34°C in August.

❄️
Winters
Chilly

Lows near 2°C in January.

🌧️
Rain
Very dry

About 151 mm of rain a year. Wettest in January.

Sky & trend
Fairly sunny

More sun than cloud through the year.

What "cold desert" 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. Mādabā's type — cold desert — sits in the broad family of dry climates — deserts and steppes.

The shorthand: BWk

Researchers write climate types as a short letter code. Here is what each letter means:

B
Arid — More water evaporates than falls as rain — the defining feature of a dry climate.
W
Desert (not just dry) — Rainfall is low enough for true desert, not merely semi-arid steppe.
k
Cold — The yearly average sits below 18 °C — a cold dry climate with real winters.

Cities with the same climate as Mādabā

A cold desert climate (BWk) — these recognizable cities share it. If you know one of them, you know roughly what to expect.

Has Mādabā's climate type changed?

Stable — Mādabā'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

🌱
For gardeners

Drought-tolerant natives only. Cold-hardy desert plants — sagebrush, juniper, hardy succulents — outperform exotics.

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For travellers

Spring and autumn are the comfortable shoulders. Winter is genuinely cold; summer is hot but dry.

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For movers & buyers

Real winters and hot summers, but always dry. Heating in winter and AC in summer; humidity stays low year-round.

Where these numbers come from

The climate type and the month-by-month figures on this page are computed from Mādabā's measured 30-year climate normals (1991–2020) — the same official records behind Mādabā'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 29 years of daily observations at Queen Alia Intl, a weather station, about 19 km from the city centre. The underlying daily records come from NOAA's global station network.

How we build these numbers →