The capital of the United States, Washington has a climate with relatively chilly and sometimes snowy winters plus hot and muggy summers.
Details below are for the DCA station at National Airport. The most recent climate data is available on weather.gov.
Key climate data
Average daily temperature
D.C.’s average high ranges from 44 degrees in mid-January to 90 degrees for much of July. The average low bottoms out at 30 degrees early in the year and rises to 73 degrees at its peak.
Record daily temperature
It has been as hot as 106 and as cold as minus-15 during the modern record in Washington.
Record daily precipitation
The most precipitation in one day in Washington is 6.39 inches on August 23. February 5 has the lowest total for record precipitation at 0.8 inches.
Average monthly precipitation
Precipitation has some variance across the year, with February the dry month and July the wet one. 41.82 inches falls annually per the current average.
Average monthly snowfall
February is the snowiest month on average, with 5 inches falling. January is close. Most of the average winter's 13.7 inches falls during those two months.
Annual temperature
The annual average temperature in D.C. is about 59 degrees. In 2024, the 61.8 degrees ended up the warmest year on record for the city.
Annual precipitation
The record year for precipitation in the city is 2018 with 66.28 inches. In 1930, only 21.66 inches fell.
Winter snowfall
The winter of 2009-2010 is Washington's snowiest, with 56.1 inches of snowfall recorded. In 1973-1974 and 1997-1998, only 0.1 inches fell.
High temperature days
Both 1980 and 2010 saw 67 days at or above 90 degrees, tied for the most in a year. In 1886 and 1905 there were only seven. As recently as 2004 there were 11.
Low temperature days
D.C. hasn't fallen to or below 0 degrees since 1994. The city averages just shy of 60 days with frozen nights per year.
Average monthly nice days
A general approximation of "nice day" criteria, as used by the Capital Weather Gang. This is an average of days with highs 65-85 degrees and no precipitation. There are spring and fall nice day seasons in the city most years.
Raw data (csv)
Washington (1871). norms: month, day
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