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Almaty has a mediterranean-influenced 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 87°F in July. About 26 days a year above 90 °F.
Lows near 18°F in January. About 110 freezing nights a year.
About 26 in of rain a year. Wettest in May.
A roughly even mix of sun and cloud.
What "mediterranean-influenced 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. Almaty's type — mediterranean-influenced 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 Almaty
A mediterranean-influenced hot-summer humid continental climate (Dsa) — these recognizable cities share it. If you know one of them, you know roughly what to expect.
Almaty sits near a climate boundary
This city sits right on the line between mediterranean-influenced 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 Almaty'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
Wine grapes, stone fruit, hardy nuts — summer drought needs irrigation; winters are hard.
Spring and autumn are the prime windows; summer is hot but dry; winter cold.
A four-season climate with a hot, dry summer — heating-heavy in winter, irrigation-heavy in summer.
Where these numbers come from
The climate type and the month-by-month figures on this page are computed from Almaty's measured 30-year climate normals (1991–2020) — the same official records behind Almaty'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 25 years of daily observations at Almaty, a weather station, about 3 km from the city centre. The underlying daily records come from NOAA's global station network.