The climate of Kota Kinabalu (KK), a town in eastern Malaysia, is hot and humid throughout every season with plenty of rainfall recorded in every month of the year.
The following is really a brief sketch of the city’s temperature and rainfall.
Temperature:
As the town is located within the equatorial region, hence the temperature remains uniformly high all through the year with almost no change from month to month. The warmest month is May having an average temperature of 28.2 C (82.8 F) even though the coolest month is January by having an average temperature of 26.7 (80.1 F). Thus the temperature remains quite uniform because difference between the common temperatures of warmest and coolest month is only 1.5 C. This type of temperature pattern is usual of equatorial regions. The temperature is so uniform that even the record warm rarely exceeds 35 C (95 F ) in each month and the record low temperature rarely falls below 16 C ( 61 F). The average high and the common low temperatures remain around 31 C (87.8 F) and 23.5 C (74.3 F) respectively in each month of the year.
Rainfall:
As the city is located within the equatorial belt in order that it receives tremendous amount of rain throughout every season. Two prevailing monsoons characterize the climate on this part of Sabah include the Northeast Monsoon along with the Southwest Monsoon. The Northeast Monsoon occurs between November and March, as the Southwest Monsoon occurs between May and September. There are also two successive inter-monsoons from April to May and from September to October.
The total annual rainfall at KK is 2547 mm (100 inches). The wettest month is October with 345.8 mm ( 13.6 inches) of rainfall while the driest month is March with 50.5 mm (1.988 inches) of rainfall. The average amount of rainy days consist of 06 in March to 16 in October. Due to frequent rain, the normal relative humidity remains constantly high and remains around 80 percent throughout the year. The wind speed ranges from 5.six or seven.9 m/s throughout the Northeast Monsoon but is significantly lower to 0.3 to three.3 m/s throughout the Southwest Monsoon.
In short, the climate of Kota Kinabalu is warm, humid and rainy all through the year. The best time to see this city influences month of March if the rainfall amount is really a moderate one with 2 ” of rainfall recorded inside the whole month.