Sweden has four seasons in the south and centre and a long, snowy winter with a short summer in the far north. In Malmö, at the southern tip, January averages 0.8 °C and July 18.5 °C, and some winters bring almost no snow. In Stockholm, January and February both average −1.0 °C, July 18.7 °C, and the city gets about 103 cm of snowfall a year. In Kiruna, 145 km north of the Arctic Circle, January averages −12.4 °C, snow usually covers the ground from late September to mid-May, the midnight sun shines from 28 May to 16 July, and the sun stays below the horizon from 11 December to 1 January. Light changes even more than temperature: Stockholm averages 18.5 hours of daylight in June and 6.2 hours in December.
Sweden covers 450,295 km² and stretches from the Øresund strait near Malmö to the mountains of Lapland, where Kebnekaise rises to 2,097 m. The Gulf Stream and the prevailing westerly winds make it much milder than other places at the same latitude, and the Scandinavian Mountains along the Norwegian border put most of the country in a rain shadow, so most of Sweden receives only 500–800 mm of precipitation a year. The monthly figures below come from the climate tables on Wikipedia, compiled from the Swedish Meteorological and Hydrological Institute (SMHI): Malmö for 1991–2018, Stockholm’s Observatorielunden station for 1991–2020, and Kiruna Airport for 2002–2021, with Kiruna’s precipitation measured at nearby Rensjön. Snow, more than rain, sets the Swedish rhythm, so the sections begin in autumn, the point where precipitation turns to snow in the north.
September to November: First Snow in Kiruna, Wet Weeks in Malmö
Autumn reaches Lapland first. Kiruna’s average high falls from 10.2 °C in September to 2.5 °C in October and −2.8 °C in November, and snow cover usually settles in late September. Daily mean temperatures in Kiruna drop below freezing in October, at −0.7 °C, and from then on precipitation accumulates as snowpack rather than running off. Sunshine collapses at the same pace, from 118 hours in September to 21 hours in November.
Farther south autumn is long, grey and damp rather than cold. Malmö still averages 18.6 °C by day in September and 12.6 °C in October, and its rainfall picks up again after a dry September, with 66.7 mm in October and 64.2 mm in November. Rain is light to moderate but frequent in Malmö, falling on about 169 days a year, so autumn there feels wetter than the totals suggest. Stockholm’s October is 7.7 °C on average, and November 3.6 °C. In southern Sweden autumn often runs straight into spring without a proper winter; in Scania, the southernmost province, some years record no meteorological winter at all. The prevailing low-pressure systems off the Atlantic, with their blanket of cloud, keep long nights above freezing and delay the cold.
December and January: Polar Night at Kiruna and Six-Hour Days in Stockholm
Midwinter is defined by darkness. In Kiruna the polar night lasts from 11 December to 1 January, about 22 days, with the exact dates depending on the local terrain, and the airport records an average of zero hours of sunshine in December. Even January brings only about 8 hours of sun there. The five darkest months, October to February, account for only around 10% of Kiruna’s annual sunshine, while April to August account for 73%, on the 1961–1990 normals. On clear nights the long darkness is the season for the aurora.
Stockholm is never fully dark at noon, but its days are short: an average of 6.2 hours of daylight in December, and only 33 hours of actual sunshine in the whole month. Cloud is the reason: just 17% of the possible sunshine reaches the city in December, against 53% in May. Malmö fares only slightly better, with around seven hours of daylight at midwinter and 33 hours of December sunshine. Temperatures in the capital hover around freezing, with a December mean of 0.6 °C and a January mean of −1.0 °C. Cold winters in Sweden tend to be the clear ones, when Atlantic lows weaken and high pressure takes over. January 1987, the coldest month on record in Stockholm, was also the sunniest January there on record.
Stockholm’s waterways can freeze in these spells. The Observatorielunden station’s lowest reading is −28.2 °C, in January, and Malmö’s record low of −28.0 °C also falls in January, despite the city’s generally windy, mild winters, in which the temperature rarely drops below −10 °C.
February to April: Stockholm’s Snowiest Month and the Dry Late Winter
February is often the deepest part of winter in the south and centre. Stockholm averages 25.6 cm of snowfall in February, the most of any month, after 23.3 cm in January and before 18.1 cm in March. In Malmö snow falls mainly between December and March but rarely lies for long, and some winters pass with no snow cover at all.
Late winter is also the driest time of year across much of Sweden. Stockholm’s driest month is March, with 27.3 mm, and Kiruna’s is also March, with 15.2 mm. Malmö’s driest month comes a little later, in April, at 30.0 mm. Clear nights are frequent, so frosts remain common well into April even quite far south.
Then the light comes back fast. Kiruna goes from 8 hours of sunshine in January to 69 in February and 162 in March, and Stockholm’s daylight jumps from 9.3 hours in February to 14.5 hours in April. Because winter breaks late and the days are already long when it does, spring temperatures rise sharply. Stockholm’s average high goes from 4.7 °C in March to 10.7 °C in April and 16.5 °C in May. In Kiruna the daily mean only climbs above freezing in May, at 4.7 °C, and the snow usually melts out by mid-May, roughly two weeks before the midnight sun begins.
May to August: The Midnight Sun and Sweden’s Summer Rain
Summer evens out the country. Daytime highs in Swedish municipal seats range only from about 19 °C to 24 °C in July, compared with a January range of −9 °C to 3 °C. Malmö averages 23.2 °C by day in July, Stockholm 23.6 °C, and Kiruna 18.5 °C. The warmest summers usually fall in the Mälaren Valley around Stockholm, where the land mass shields the east coast from Atlantic depressions. When hot continental air arrives, the long days push temperatures past 30 °C even on the coast, and coastal towns can have tropical nights above 20 °C.
North of the Arctic Circle the sun does not set. At Kiruna the midnight sun lasts from 28 May to 16 July, about 50 days, and the white nights stretch from early May to early August. At Abisko, 195 km north of the Arctic Circle on the shore of Lake Torneträsk, summer hikers walk under it on the slopes of Nuolja. Stockholm, well to the south, still gets more than 18 hours of daylight in late June, and Malmö 17 hours 31 minutes at midsummer.
Summer is also the wet season, the opposite of Mediterranean Europe. Malmö’s wettest month is August, with 86.3 mm. Stockholm’s is August too, at 66.2 mm, more than double its March total. In Kiruna, July brings 92.7 mm, nearly a fifth of the year’s 493 mm. Abisko, sheltered by the mountains, is one of the driest places in Sweden, receiving less than half the precipitation of Riksgränsen on the Norwegian border just to the west. The south-west of the country, by contrast, gets 1,000–1,200 mm a year, and parts of the northern mountains up to an estimated 2,000 mm.
Målilla, Vuoggatjålme and Sweden’s Weather Extremes
Sweden’s national records sit at opposite ends of the calendar. The highest temperature ever recorded in the country is 38 °C, measured at Målilla in Småland in June 1947, a record shared with Ultuna in Uppland. The lowest is −52.6 °C, at Vuoggatjålme in Lapland on 2 February 1966.
The three cities each hold their own. Malmö’s record high is 35.1 °C, set in June, and Stockholm’s Observatorielunden station has reached 35.4 °C in August, though the city’s highest reading of all, 36 °C, dates from 3 July 1811. Kiruna reached 31.6 °C in July 1945, its all-time high, and July 2018 was its warmest month on record, with an average high of 24.3 °C, almost six degrees above normal. Its coldest confirmed reading, −43.3 °C, came at a nearby station in January 1999. Even so, Kiruna’s winters are milder than those at the same latitude in Siberia or northern Canada, thanks to the Atlantic influence that reaches across the mountains.
Annual sunshine across Sweden ranges from about 1,100 to 1,900 hours. Stockholm records 1,899 hours a year and the Malmö area (measured at Falsterbo) 1,918, while Kiruna gets about 1,567, almost 90% of it between March and September. That uneven light shapes Swedish life as much as the cold: from the shortest days around the winter solstice to Midsummer in late June, each season is defined by how much light there is. For a closer look at the dark half of the year, see our guide to the northern lights; for the bright half, our explainer on the midnight sun shows how far north it reaches, and the long-term averages are set out in our page on the climate of Sweden.