Poland has a temperate climate that changes from oceanic in the west to continental in the east. Winters are cold and summers are warm and fairly wet. In Warsaw the average temperature is −1.5 °C in January and 19.7 °C in July, and the city gets about 550 mm of precipitation a year, with July the wettest month (1991–2020 normals). Average annual temperatures range from about 6 °C in the north-east to 10 °C in the south-west, and the national average precipitation is about 600 mm. The exceptions are the Baltic coast, where the sea keeps summers cooler, and the Tatra Mountains on the Slovak border, where Kasprowy Wierch averages just 0.1 °C over the year and snow lies into May. Poland's hottest temperature on record is 40.5 °C, at Słubice on 28 June 2026. The coldest is −41.0 °C, at Siedlce on 11 January 1940.
Most of Poland is low and open. The average elevation is 173 m, and only about 3% of the country's roughly 312,700 km² lies above 500 m. With no mountain barrier to the west or east, mild, moist Atlantic air and cold continental air from the east both cross the country freely, and the weather can change quickly from one week to the next. The real contrasts come from distance to the sea and height, so the clearest way to describe the climate is region by region, from the Baltic to the Tatras.
Gdańsk and the Baltic coast: cool summers by the sea
Poland's coastline runs for about 770 km, from the Pomeranian Bay near the German border to the Gulf of Gdańsk in the east. In Gdańsk the July average is 17.7 °C, two degrees cooler than Warsaw, and the average July high is 22.6 °C. The Baltic warms slowly in spring, so the coast stays cool well into the season. The average high in May is 16.8 °C in Gdańsk, against 19.8 °C in Warsaw.
The Baltic does less to soften winter in Gdańsk than you might expect. The city's January average of −1.4 °C is almost the same as Warsaw's, and its record low is −29.8 °C. The milder coastal winters belong mainly to the far west, around Świnoujście, Międzyzdroje and Szczecin, which get more of the westerly winds from the Atlantic. Gdańsk's precipitation, 571 mm a year, follows the national pattern: February is the driest month at 23.7 mm and July the wettest at 79.4 mm. The city gets about 1,726 hours of sunshine a year, peaking in May and June at 244 and 259 hours.
Wind is a constant on this coast. In Słowiński National Park, near Łeba, wind carries sand inland from the beach and moves the dunes 3 to 10 m a year. For more on the sea itself, see our guide to the Baltic Sea.
Warsaw and the central lowlands: Poland's middle climate
The broad Polish Plain, shaped by glacial erosion in the Pleistocene ice age, covers most of the country, and Warsaw's figures are typical of it. Monthly averages at Warsaw Chopin Airport range from −1.5 °C in January to 19.7 °C in July. The average July high is 25.2 °C and the average January low is −4.0 °C. Warsaw's records go back to 1779, and December 2006 was the warmest December in Poland since that year.
Rain in Poland falls mostly in summer, unlike in Mediterranean countries. Warsaw gets 82.2 mm in July but only 29.0 mm in March, and across the lowlands summer precipitation is about twice the winter total, which gives farmers a reliable water supply. In the lowlands about half of the winter precipitation falls as snow, but the totals are small. Along the Vistula between Warsaw and the Baltic, and in the far north-west, the yearly average is below 500 mm. Warsaw gets about 1,997 hours of sunshine a year, rising from 34 hours in December to 295 in July.
Winter on the plain can also be surprisingly warm. On 1 January 2022, Warsaw recorded 18.9 °C at 11:30 in the morning, the highest January temperature reported in Poland. Snowless Decembers have become common as average temperatures rise: there were 19 between 1980 and 2010, and seven in 2000–2010 alone.
Suwałki and Siedlce: the cold north-east
Moving east, the climate becomes more continental. Winters are colder and the gap between summer and winter is wider. Suwałki, near the Lithuanian border in the lake country of the north-east, shows the change clearly. Its 1991–2020 annual average is 7.2 °C and its January average is −3.3 °C, almost two degrees colder than Warsaw. Spring also arrives later: the growing season in the north-east is about 40 days shorter than in the south-west. In the south-east, along the border with Ukraine, winter temperatures average about 4.5 °C lower than in western Poland, and the gap between summer and winter is the largest in the country.
The national cold record comes from this side of the country. On 11 January 1940, Siedlce, about 90 km east of Warsaw, recorded −41.0 °C.
Kraków, Wrocław and Słubice: the warm south-west
The south-west is the warmest part of Poland. It is furthest from the cold continental air of the east, and its growing season runs about 40 days longer than in the north-east. Wrocław's annual average is 9.7 °C and its January average is 0.0 °C, well above Suwałki's. Tarnów, Wrocław and Słubice are named as the hottest cities in Poland.
Słubice, a border town on the Oder facing Frankfurt (Oder) in Germany, now holds the national heat record. On 28 June 2026 it reached 40.5 °C, beating the 40.2 °C recorded at Prószków, about 10 km south of Opole, on 29 July 1921, a record that had stood for more than a century. On 31 December 2021, Słubice was about 17 °C around midnight, one of the warmest winter nights on record in the region.
Kraków, on the Vistula in the southern uplands, has warm summers and cold winters. At the airport station, July averages 19.3 °C and January −1.6 °C. The record low there is −29.9 °C, and snow lies on the ground on about 55 days a year. Precipitation is 673 mm a year, higher than on the plain. July is again the wettest month at 98.2 mm.
Zakopane, Kasprowy Wierch and the halny wind
The Tatras are Poland's highest mountains and the only stretch of alpine landscape in the Polish Carpathians. All 70 Polish peaks above 2,000 m are here, rising to Rysy at about 2,500 m, and the climate changes quickly with height. Zakopane, at 855 m in the Podhale region, averages 6.2 °C over the year. It gets 1,145 mm of precipitation, twice as much as Warsaw, with 191.6 mm in July alone, and snow covers the ground on about 179 days a year. Snow cover is deepest in March, averaging 97.9 cm, and the town's record low is −34.1 °C.
Higher up, Kasprowy Wierch has one of the harshest climates in Poland. The weather station on its summit ridge, at about 1,990 m, has an annual average of 0.1 °C and a July average of only 8.6 °C. It gets 1,764 mm of precipitation a year, with 248.1 mm in July. Snow covers the ground on about 216 days a year, and the average snow cover peaks at 153.3 cm in March. It is still close to 148 cm in April and 68 cm in May.
The Tatras also produce Poland's best-known local wind, the halny. It is a foehn: air from the south crosses the main ridge from Slovakia, loses its moisture on the southern slopes and comes down into Podhale as a warm, dry, gusty wind. Halny winds blow mostly in October and November, sometimes in February and March, and rarely at other times. They can tear off roofs, set off avalanches and, according to local belief, affect people's moods. A destructive halny known as the Wind of the Century struck in May 1968 with gusts reportedly reaching 288 km/h, and flattened large areas of forest in southern Poland.
July 1997: the Millennium Flood on the Oder
Poland's wet summers sometimes bring floods. In July 1997 a Genoa low, a depression that forms over northern Italy, stalled over southern Poland and Moravia, held in place by a blocked field of high pressure between the Azores and Scandinavia. Two spells of rain, from 3 to 10 July and from 17 to 22 July, brought 300 to 600 mm to south-western Poland and the north-east of the Czech Republic. That is several months' rain in a few days. River levels rose 2 to 3 m above previously recorded averages. In Poland it became the Millennium Flood (Powódź tysiąclecia), so called because such a flood was estimated to have a 0.1% chance in any year. Across Poland, the Czech Republic and Germany, 114 people died and damage was put at about $4.5 billion.
Thunderstorms and floods in July, heavy snow in the Tatras, and a mild, sunny May and September on the plain shape the Polish year. For month-by-month travel advice built on these figures, see best time to visit Poland; our page on how big Poland is shows how much ground lies between the Baltic and the Tatras.