Weather in Dar es Salaam in September

Prime time. If you get to pick your dates, September is the one. Highs average 28.8 °C, lows 23.7 °C, and rain falls on 5 days — nothing in the month is working against you.

September ranks 4 of 12 in Dar es Salaam: past the worst of the year but short of July, which is the month to book if the dates are open.

Rain falls on only 5 days, so an itinerary with no wet-weather fallback is a reasonable risk. Pack for 28.8 °C days and 23.7 °C nights; the spread matters more here than any single number.

What the averages hide

Averages flatten a month, and this one hides a few things: it never really gets hot: not one day in an average September reaches 30 °C; the day barely swings — 5.1 °C between the overnight low and the afternoon high. Across the twenty years measured, the hottest September day reached 30.4 °C and the coldest night fell to 22 °C, and the wettest single day dropped 38 mm — roughly 158% of the month's rain in one day.

This is the volatile part. September rainfall has ranged from 1 mm to 101 mm across the twenty years measured — a 100 mm spread around an average of 24 mm. The average is real but almost no individual September looks like it, so treat the figure as the middle of a wide range rather than a forecast.

Wind sits around 17 km/h — a steady breeze rather than a nuisance, and welcome on the warmer days, and humidity is unremarkable at 72%.

How September sits in the year

Temperatures hold steady either side: 28.1 °C in August, 28.8 here, 29.7 in October. Nothing about the timing within the month matters much. Rain is the thing that moves: October brings 6 days more of it, so the earlier half of a flexible trip is the safer half.

Daylight in September

Dar es Salaam sits close enough to the equator that daylight barely moves all year — 12.1 hours in September, against a range of just 0.8 hours across the whole calendar. Sunrise and sunset land at roughly the same time whenever you come.

Sea temperature

The sea sits at about 25.9 °C in September — warm enough to stay in as long as you like. The sea peaks at 29.5 °C in March and bottoms out at 25.6 °C — water lags the air by a month or two, which is why the best swimming often comes after the best weather.

How busy it gets

Busy. Popular without being frantic; book the things you care about, improvise the rest.

Crowd levels are estimated from climate desirability and school-holiday calendars, not from visitor numbers.

September in Dar es Salaam versus nearby

If Dar es Salaam is one option among several, the nearby comparison is worth making. Zanzibar is close enough to be a coin toss — within a degree on temperature, the same number of rain days. Mombasa is the weaker option in September — 3 °C warmer, 3 days more rain.

So: September works, with July the better month by 8 points if the dates can move. If they cannot, nothing here should stop you booking.

Every month in Dar es Salaam

See all twelve months in Dar es Salaam, or where else to go in September.