Weather in Pretoria in February

Shoulder season. February is shoulder season in Pretoria — cheaper, quieter, and a genuine gamble. You should expect rain on 16 days of the month, which is more days wet than dry.

February ranks 9 of 12 in Pretoria: past the worst of the year but short of June, which is the month to book if the dates are open.

This is persistent light rain rather than storms: 16 wet days but only 1 heavy ones. It rarely cancels anything outright, and it rarely fully clears either. A jacket beats an umbrella. Pack for 30.3 °C days and 16.6 °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: 16 days top 30 °C — hot spells arrive, but they break. Across the twenty years measured, the hottest February day reached 37.7 °C and the coldest night fell to 10.5 °C, and the wettest single day dropped 46 mm — roughly 61% of the month's rain in one day.

February is moderately variable: 23 mm in the driest year against 142 mm in the wettest, around an average of 75 mm. Roughly two Februarys in three land near that average, and the third does something else entirely.

Wind is light at 6.7 km/h, so the temperature on the page is close to the temperature on your skin, and humidity is unremarkable at 59%.

How February sits in the year

Temperatures hold steady either side: 30.4 °C in January, 30.3 here, 29 in March. Nothing about the timing within the month matters much.

Daylight in February

13 hours of daylight, losing 0.7 hours across the month. That is between Pretoria's extremes of 13.7 and 10.5 hours, so days are long enough not to constrain the plan.

An inland climate

With no coast nearby, the year swings a fair way — 26.3 °C between the warmest afternoons and the coldest nights, wider than any coastal city at this latitude would manage. At 1332 m the air is thin enough to matter — sun that burns faster than the temperature suggests, and nights that cool off quickly.

How busy it gets

Off season. The genuine off season: cheapest by a distance, with the caveat that some tours and restaurants close entirely.

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

February in Pretoria versus nearby

If Pretoria is one option among several, the nearby comparison is worth making. Johannesburg is a better bet in February — 3.4 °C cooler, the same number of rain days. Pietermaritzburg is close enough to be a coin toss — 2.4 °C cooler, 5 days more rain.

So: February is a compromise. June is 40 points better and is what Pretoria is actually like at its best — worth moving the trip for if that is possible, and worth adjusting expectations for if it is not.

Every month in Pretoria

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