Discover the best time of year, based on historical climate, temperature, and precipitation.
The best weather in Huaraz is from June, July, August. — consistent weather climate
🌥Mild
| Score | 54 | 60 | 43 | 70 | 87 | 97 | 97 | 96 | 83 | 65 | 71 | 48 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Climate | Cool & rainy | Cool & rainy | Cool & rainy | Cool & rainy | Mild | Mild | Mild | Mild | Mild | Cool & rainy | Cool & rainy | Cool & rainy |
| Temperature | 9–19°C | 9–19°C | 9–19°C | 8–20°C | 8–20°C | 7–21°C | 6–22°C | 7–23°C | 8–22°C | 8–21°C | 8–20°C | 9–20°C |
| Feels like | 8–21°C | 8–21°C | 8–21°C | 7–21°C | 6–20°C | 5–20°C | 4–21°C | 5–22°C | 6–22°C | 7–22°C | 7–22°C | 7–21°C |
| Precipitation | 221mm 23 days | 196mm 20 days | 263mm 25 days | 163mm 17 days | 54mm 10 days | 8mm 3 days | 8mm 2 days | 18mm 3 days | 92mm 10 days | 180mm 17 days | 156mm 15 days | 242mm 23 days |
| Sunshine | 6.7h ☀︎ 53% | 6.4h ☀︎ 51% | 5.9h ☀︎ 49% | 8.3h ☀︎ 70% | 11.1h ☀︎ 95% | 11.2h ☀︎ 97% | 11.4h ☀︎ 98% | 11.4h ☀︎ 96% | 11.3h ☀︎ 94% | 8.9h ☀︎ 72% | 7.1h ☀︎ 57% | 6.4h ☀︎ 51% |
| Wind | W · 9 km/h | SW · 9 km/h | W · 9 km/h | SW · 9 km/h | SW · 9 km/h | SW · 10 km/h | SW · 12 km/h | SW · 12 km/h | SW · 12 km/h | SW · 10 km/h | SW · 10 km/h | W · 9 km/h |
| Humidity (%) | 74% | 74% | 76% | 75% | 72% | 58% | 48% | 48% | 60% | 70% | 69% | 75% |
| Day length | 12.6h | 12.4h | 12.1h | 11.9h | 11.7h | 11.6h | 11.6h | 11.8h | 12.1h | 12.3h | 12.6h | 12.7h |
Held each June in Huaraz, this mountaineering festival celebrates the climbing history of the Cordillera Blanca with par…
Huaraz is built entirely for the staggering glaciated heights of the Cordillera Blanca, yet travelers flood the city in November and December just as torrential mountain storms set in, entirely missing the sun-drenched, crystal-clear winter of June through August.
Perched over three thousand meters high in the Callejón de Huaylas, Huaraz does not try to charm you with manicured colonial alleys or delicate urban graces. You come here because the valley wall abruptly ends and launches straight into the sky—a jagged barrier of turquoise glacial tarns, hanging seracs, and sixty-degree ice flutes. The city itself, hugging the banks of the rushing Santa River, is fundamentally a staging ground for thin-air endurance. What nobody tells you is how wildly out of sync visitors are with the actual Andean seasons. The city fills to its absolute breaking point late in the year when the mountains are shrouded in cloud and drenched in rain, leaving the magnificent winter months of June, July, and August wide open, quiet, and shockingly clear.
Step outside at sunrise in July and the air feels like broken glass in the lungs—sub-zero, bone-dry, and clean. Within an hour, a blazing equatorial sun crests the Cordillera Blanca, warming the stone around the Plaza de Armas to a perfect, crisp T-shirt temperature while the snowcaps gleam sharp against a deep navy sky. Rain simply ceases to exist; you can walk for a fortnight on high moraine trails without seeing a solitary gray cloud.
This is the season Huaraz was born for. Mountaineers haul loaded haul-bags across town, ropes and ice tools clank on the pavements, and during Andinism Week in June, the town hums with climbers sharing route conditions. Despite offering the most dependable mountain weather in South America, the valley is remarkably uncrowded. Trails leading into the high passes remain quiet corridors of silence and wind, with none of the overwhelming tourist pressure that arrives later in the calendar.
By September, the absolute stillness of the dry winter begins to fray. Mornings still break bright and luminous, with razor-sharp views of the glaciated ramparts across the Callejón de Huaylas, but by mid-afternoon, dense, bruised cloud banks roll in from the Amazon basin to cap the peaks. You will find yourself checking the horizon by one in the afternoon, timing your descent from high-altitude lakes before the first sharp raindrops rattle off your waterproof shell.
October amplifies this shift. The afternoon showers turn into prolonged soakings that churn high-altitude trailheads into sticky gray clay. Yet because the mornings often remain workable, it attracts self-reliant trekkers who appreciate the lush green that suddenly rushes across the lower valley floor. If you go now, your boots will be muddy, your summit views will rely on luck, and your alarms must be set for dawn to beat the daily cycle of afternoon rain.
November presents the great paradox of Huaraz. By any objective metric of Andean mountaineering, the weather has turned punishing: afternoon squalls evolve into heavy downpours, low cloud swallows the summits for days at a time, and the higher passes become cold, slippery hazards. Yet November is the single most congested month of the entire year, followed closely by a swarming December.
Streets jam with traffic, mountain gear shops operate at full tilt, and travelers arrive in busloads, many caught completely off guard by the grim afternoon weather. Escaping into the backcountry requires serious resilience now—you will hike through sodden pampa grass, camp under steady drumming rain, and rarely see the summits that drew you to the region. Why anyone chooses this soaking, claustrophobic window over July remains one of the Andean travel calendar's strangest mysteries.
January through March is the peak of the Andean wet season, and Huaraz turns inward. The Santa River swells into a churning brown torrent, fed by relentless rain that sweeps up the valley. The peaks of the Cordillera Blanca retreat almost entirely behind gray curtains of storm, emerging only in ghostly, fleeting glimpses when the cloud deck tears apart for twenty minutes.
March is the wettest, gloomiest month on record, with daily downpours heavy enough to trigger landslides along mountain access roads. High trekking routes become genuine alpine hazards of wet snow, zero visibility, and biting moisture that soaks through every layer. If you find yourself in Huaraz in these months, the town is quiet and local life proceeds at an easy, unhurried pace, but the wild vertical backcountry that gives the city its reputation is effectively closed for business.
April marks the turning of the tide. The heavy downpours break down into sporadic afternoon showers, the air clears, and the entire valley emerges startlingly green. Waterfalls plunge down granite faces with furious spring volume, fueled by months of melted snow and rain. For photographers, April provides a dramatic theater of shifting mists and lush pastures that dry winter simply cannot match.
By May, the transformation is complete. The sun claims the sky for eleven hours a day, the rain drops to occasional light drizzle, and the mountain air settles into that dry, crystalline stillness that makes every summit look within arm's reach. May is the seasoned trekker's best-kept secret: the hills are still emerald green from the rainy season, the passes are drying fast, and the winter climbing crowds have not yet rolled off the night buses from Lima.