Weather

Budapest has a temperate, transitional climate - somewhere between the mild, rainy weather of Transdanubia, protected by the Alps to the west, and the harsh, variable climate of the flat and open Great Plain to the east. The Budapest spring arrives in early April and usually ends in showers. Summer can be very hot and humid. It rains for most of November and doesn't usually get cold until mid-December. Winter is relatively short, often cloudy and damp but sometimes brilliantly sunny. What little snow the city gets usually disappears after a few days. January is the coldest month (with the temperature averaging -2°C/28°F) and August the hottest (21°C/70°F - although summers can get much hotter than this average). The number of hours of sunshine a year averages just over 2000, among the highest in Europe; from April to the end of September, you can expect the sun to shine for about 10 hours a day.