Weather in Palmerston North in February

Prime time. If you get to pick your dates, February is the one. Highs average 23.8 °C, lows 13.8 °C, and rain falls on 9 days — nothing in the month is working against you.

February ranks 2 of 12 in Palmerston North. Only January scores clearly higher, and the difference is small enough to be settled by price rather than weather.

Rain on 9 days, 2 of them heavy. Enough to need a plan B, not enough to need a plan around it. Nothing specialised needed — this is the month you pack for the trip rather than for the weather.

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 February reaches 30 °C. Across the twenty years measured, the hottest February day reached 31.6 °C and the coldest night fell to 6.5 °C, and the wettest single day dropped 58 mm — roughly 94% of the month's rain in one day.

This is the volatile part. February rainfall has ranged from 17 mm to 286 mm across the twenty years measured — a 269 mm spread around an average of 62 mm. The average is real but almost no individual February looks like it, so treat the figure as the middle of a wide range rather than a forecast.

Wind is light at 13.4 km/h, so the temperature on the page is close to the temperature on your skin, and humidity runs at 75%, high enough to notice on the warm days without dominating them.

How February sits in the year

Temperatures hold steady either side: 23.3 °C in January, 23.8 here, 21.9 in March. Nothing about the timing within the month matters much.

Daylight in February

13.7 hours of daylight, losing 1.2 hours across the month. That is between Palmerston North's extremes of 15 and 9.3 hours, so days are long enough not to constrain the plan.

An inland climate

Despite being inland, the year stays fairly even: 17.7 °C between the year's warmest afternoons and coldest nights.

How busy it gets

Peak season. Expect the highest prices of the year and to be booking well ahead.

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

February in Palmerston North versus nearby

If Palmerston North is one option among several, the nearby comparison is worth making. Wellington is close enough to be a coin toss — 4.3 °C cooler, 2 days less rain. Taupo is close enough to be a coin toss — within a degree on temperature, the same number of rain days.

So: February is effectively as good as it gets here — 0 points behind January, which is inside the margin where the weather stops being the deciding factor and price starts being it.

Every month in Palmerston North

See all twelve months in Palmerston North, or where else to go in February.