Urumqi Climate

Spring

The spring of Urumqi arrives late. Its northern suburb areas welcome spring earlier, the date is on March 26 or so. It arrives the city center two weeks later, about April 8th.. Then, about 10 days later (April 20th or so), southern suburbs can see the life of green. Every year, spring ends from north to south. Rainfall in this season accounts for 40% of annual precipitation, which is favorable for spring sowing and upland crops.

Summer

In summer, Urumqi is covered by colorful flowers in its suburb mountainous areas and flourishing trees in city forest belt. Summer only lingers in northern suburb 62 days. And for Nanshan Pasture, there is no real summer. Spring and autumn connects each other. Summer of Urumqi is hot but not stuffy, but there is large day and night temperature difference. The urban average temperature in summer is about 23 ℃.

Autumn

Autumn in Urumqi begins on August 24th. Its summer of northern plains will delay ten days. Once autumn comes, the weather is fairly stable and neither too hot nor too cold, with mild and pleasant days. From late September, cold air would strike again and again, and the temperature drops rapidly. In October, the temperature gap between day and night turns up much more dramatically. There is one local saying that could reflect the climate in this period quite well: “wearing fur jackets in the morning but voile clothes in the evening, sitting and eating watermelons around the hot stove”. From the saying, you could feel the temperature differences during a day.

Winter

Winter in Urumqi lasts long, 150 days from November 3rd to April 8th of the coming year. Urumqi is surrounded by mountains on three sides and faces Junggar Basin in north like a trumpet mouth. Owing to Tianshan Mountain’s working as barrier, cold air tends to stay within the basin. There is a “warm belt” in the front of southern piedmont hills so that the temperature here is higher 4 to 5℃than that in urban in January, which unique winter weather conditions contribute to greenhouse vegetable production. In southern suburb, accumulated snow could keep 175 days.

Sunshine & Precipitation

With monthly percent possible sunshine ranging from 30 percent in December to 70 percent in August and September, the city receives 2,523 hours of bright sunshine annually. Its annual precipitation is about 290 millimeters.

Clothing Advice

There are fairly large day and night as well as season temperature differences in Urumqi, so you had better prepare warm clothes like wind coat in any season.