Most of Brazil has two seasons, wet and dry, rather than four: the country lies largely in the tropics, so rainfall changes far more through the year than temperature does. On the calendar its seasons are the southern-hemisphere ones, with summer from the December solstice to the March equinox and winter from June to September. Belém and Manaus have daytime highs of about 31–34 °C all year and divide the year by rainfall, while Brasília gets almost no rain from June to August. Four seasons in the European sense belong mainly to the South, below the Tropic of Capricorn, with frost and occasional snow at São Joaquim in Santa Catarina. Even the timing of the rain is reversed along the north-east coast, where Recife's wettest month is June. Region by region, using the station averages from INMET (Brazil's National Institute of Meteorology) and NOAA quoted on Wikipedia, this is how the year actually runs.
The North: Belém and Manaus, where the seasons are measured in rain
In the Amazon the thermometer barely moves. Manaus averages highs between 31.1 °C in February and 34.1 °C in September, and its lows stay within a degree of 24 °C all year. What changes is the rain. Manaus receives 2,362 mm a year, with more than 290 mm in each month from January to April, peaking at 331.0 mm in April. August, the driest month, gets only 56.1 mm. Rain falls on about 19 days in March but fewer than 6 days in August, and the hottest weeks come at the end of the dry season, in September and October.
Belém, near the mouth of the Amazon, is wetter still, with 3,308 mm a year and 506.3 mm in March alone, rain on 26 days that month. Even Belém's driest months, August and September, average around 120–130 mm. The Amazon has a three- to five-month dry season despite its huge rainfall totals, and its timing depends on which side of the equator a place is: Boa Vista, north of the equator in Roraima, has a different dry season from Manaus. Cold spells are rare but do happen. When polar air pushes this far north, temperatures can drop below 18 °C, and the rainforest town of Cruzeiro do Sul has twice recorded less than 2.5 °C.
Recife, Salvador and Fortaleza: a coast that rains in autumn and winter
Along the north-east coast the wet season comes at a completely different time from most of Brazil. Recife's rain builds from 106.6 mm in January to a peak of 390.5 mm in June, with rain on 22 to 23 days a month in June and July, then falls to just 39.0 mm in November. Salvador follows the same pattern, wettest in April and May with about 285 to 302 mm, and driest in December. In both cities the southern-hemisphere autumn and winter are the rainy seasons, and the summer months that bring storms to Rio de Janeiro are comparatively dry. Temperatures barely change: Recife's highs range only from 27.9 °C to 31.0 °C.
Further north and west along the coast, the rain comes earlier. Fortaleza, in Ceará, gets 385.0 mm in April and 336.9 mm in March, but under 15 mm a month from September to November.
Lençóis Maranhenses: lagoons that exist only after the January–June rains
The same rhythm shapes the Lençóis Maranhenses National Park in Maranhão, a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 2024. About 70% of its roughly 1,200 mm of yearly rain falls between January and May. From January to June the rain fills the hollows between dunes up to 40 metres high with freshwater lagoons up to 3 metres deep, which can cover 41% of the park. In the dry season they evaporate by up to a metre a month. The park, protected since 2 June 1981, covers 155,000 hectares and includes 70 km of Atlantic coastline. The dunes are made of sand carried to the coast by the Parnaíba and Preguiças rivers and then blown back inland by the wind for up to 50 km. The rain does not drain away because a layer of impermeable rock lies under the sand, so for a few months a year this desert-like coast holds a maze of clear pools, with water between 27.5 °C and 32 °C.
Petrolina and the sertão: a few weeks of rain and long months of drought
Inland from that wet coast lies the sertão, the semi-arid interior of the North-east and the driest part of Brazil. Petrolina, on the São Francisco River in Pernambuco, averages just 419 mm a year. March is its wettest month at 83.6 mm, and from May to October no month averages more than 11 mm. August averages 1.7 mm on half a rainy day. Temperatures are high all year, with highs from 29.8 °C in July to 34.3 °C in November, and the North-east is the hottest region of Brazil, often passing 38 °C in the May-to-November dry season.
The rain here is unreliable as well as scarce. Quixeramobim in Ceará receives about 560 mm a year, and severe droughts come in cycles that average about seven years. The landscape changes completely with the seasons. The caatinga, a thorny scrub and dry forest covering 912,529 km², nearly 10% of Brazil, sheds its leaves in the dry months and turns grey-brown. When the rain arrives, the plants have a short burst of growth during a rainy season that lasts about three months, and the sertão turns green.
Brasília, Cuiabá and the Pantanal: the Central-West’s wet summer and dry winter
The Central-West has the clearest wet-and-dry split in Brazil. Brasília, 1,172 metres up on the central plateau, receives 1,479 mm a year, with more than 175 mm in every month from November to March, peaking at 253.1 mm in November. Then the rain stops: June averages 3.3 mm and July 1.5 mm, with no rainy days in an average July. Because of its altitude, the capital stays mild, with highs of 25 to 29 °C all year, and its warmest month is September, at the end of the dry season, just before the rains return.
Cuiabá, in Mato Grosso, follows the same calendar with more heat, averaging 35.6 °C in September and 261.9 mm of rain in February. The same seasons drive the Pantanal, the world's largest tropical wetland, which covers an estimated 140,000 to 195,000 km², mostly in Mato Grosso do Sul but extending into Mato Grosso, Bolivia and Paraguay. Most of its rain falls between November and March, and in the rainy season about 80% of the floodplain goes under water. Along the Paraguay River, water levels rise by two to five metres each year, and then drain slowly through the dry months.
Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo: summer storms on the south-east coast and plateau
In the South-east, the seasons look more familiar, though summer is still the wet season. São Paulo, 785 metres up on the plateau, receives 292.1 mm in January and 257.7 mm in February, but only 32.3 mm in August. Its highs range from 29.0 °C in February to 22.9 °C in June and July, and July nights average 12.8 °C, cool enough that the city's winter feels like a real season. Plateau cities such as São Paulo, Brasília and Belo Horizonte are mild for their latitude because of their altitude.
Rio de Janeiro, at sea level, is hotter and drier. In the 1981–2010 normals for the Saúde station, its February highs average 32.2 °C and its July highs 26.4 °C, and the city recorded 43.2 °C on 26 December 2012. Rain peaks in summer, at about 130 to 137 mm a month from December to March, and drops to about 42 mm in June and July. Brazil's Carnival, held over the five days before Ash Wednesday, falls in February or March, in the hottest and wettest part of Rio's year. The national heat record, 44.8 °C, was set inland at Araçuaí in Minas Gerais on 19 November 2023.
Porto Alegre and Curitiba: the South’s four seasons
South of the Tropic of Capricorn, Brazil has winters with frost. Porto Alegre, almost at sea level, is hot in summer, with a 31.0 °C average high in January, and cool in winter, with July averaging 19.7 °C by day and 10.4 °C at night. Its rain is spread evenly through the year, with no dry season: every month gets between 103 and 164 mm. That lack of a dry season makes floods a recurring risk. From 29 April 2024, heavy rain over Rio Grande do Sul caused the country's worst flooding in more than 80 years, with 181 deaths counted by July 2024.
Curitiba, at about 935 metres, is cooler, with a July average low of 9.3 °C. The Iguazu River rises near Curitiba, and on Paraná's border with Argentina the volume pouring over Iguazu Falls is usually greatest from December to February, one of the rainiest periods there. In the dry spell of 2006 the flow dropped to 300 m³/s, against an average of about 1,746 m³/s.
São Joaquim, Santa Catarina: where Brazil gets snow
The coldest towns in Brazil are in the highlands of Santa Catarina, where São Joaquim, Urupema and Bom Jardim da Serra are often named the country's coldest. São Joaquim, at 1,415 metres, averages a 14.6 °C high and 5.9 °C low in July, and frost formed on about 41 days a year on average between 1980 and 2003. It is one of the few Brazilian cities that gets snow almost every year, most often in July and August, and in 1990 it had 12 days of snow.
Brazil's official low, −14 °C, was recorded at Caçador in Santa Catarina on 11 June 1952. An unofficial −17.8 °C was measured on the summit of Morro da Igreja near Urubici on 30 June 1996. Both are a long way from the image of Brazil as a country of endless summer.
For the climate zones behind these patterns, the climate of Brazil guide goes further, and the wet-season flood is covered in detail in the guide to the Pantanal wetlands. If you are matching a trip to these regional calendars, the best time to visit Brazil guide sets the Amazon, the coast and the South side by side.