Weather · Nairobi County
Weather Forecast for Nairobi, Kenya
Nairobi's farms are compact and market-close — the plots of Embakasi and Roysambu, the greenhouse corridors, the nurseries that feed the city. The weather that matters here moves fast: an afternoon storm can turn a spraying day into a mud day in an hour. This dashboard tracks that, hour by hour, and turns it into an irrigation and activity outlook for city farms.
Use the location bar below to search your exact farm — the dashboard loads for the point you pick, and the panels update to it. Current Weather is now; the Rainfall Forecast is the next 24 hours and the week; the Irrigation Weather Outlook is the LOW / MODERATE / HIGH attention call; and the Farm Activity Outlook covers field work, spraying, planting, transplanting, harvesting and irrigation. Select your crop in What Are You Growing? to read the same weather through its lens — the forecast never changes, only the interpretation.
Common farm areas:
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Current Weather
What This Means for Your Farm
Rainfall Forecast
7-Day Farm Forecast
Irrigation Weather Outlook
Water Loss Outlook
Farm Activity Outlook
What Are You Growing?
Select your crop to see how the current weather interacts with it. The forecast never changes — only the interpretation does.
Weather Alerts
Location
Weather and farming in Nairobi
Nairobi sits at about 1,700 m, which is why the city's farms get the highland pattern in miniature: two rainy seasons (the longer one around March–May, the shorter around October–December), cooler nights, and rain that tends to arrive in intense bursts rather than long drizzles. For a ¼-acre plot or a single-room greenhouse, those bursts are the whole weather story — the rain either wets the beds thoroughly or runs off them, and the time between bursts is when the drip system works.
The urban setting adds two things rural counties don't have. First, temperature swings: the city's hard surfaces hold the day's heat, so greenhouse and bag growers see warmer still air than the open plots next door — the dashboard's current temperature is the point value, not the plot value, which is worth remembering when you compare it with what the crop feels. Second, fog and haze in the dry months, which the weather codes report as reduced visibility rather than rain — useful to know, because a fogg Nairobi morning can look like moisture and isn't.
The areas served from this dashboard point include Embakasi, Rongai, Kawangware, Roysambu and Kibra. Because micro-locations matter more in the city than anywhere, use the search bar for your specific estate or plot area rather than relying on the city-centre reading alone.
Crops this outlook reads for
From the What Are You Growing? selector on this page, the crops most worked here read the same weather with their own framings: Kale, Tomatoes, Strawberries (greenhouse). The full list — sixteen crops — is available in the selector, and the crop pages carry the deeper agronomy.
FAQ
Weather questions from Nairobi farms
Does the Nairobi reading apply to my plot in Embakasi or Rongai?
Roughly, but not exactly. The default point is the city, and plots in Embakasi, Rongai or Kawangware sit a few kilometres out with their own small differences in temperature and storm timing. Use the search bar with your area's name — the geocoder finds most Nairobi suburbs and estate names — so the dashboard works from the nearest real coordinates instead of the centre.
Why does Nairobi show fog sometimes instead of rain?
The weather code for fog (and haze) is a visibility condition, not precipitation. On this dashboard, a fog reading means the air is saturated and visibility is down — the soil is not getting wet from it. If the rainfall forecast beside the fog is near zero, treat the day as dry for irrigation purposes and check the soil as usual.
What does a 70% rain chance mean for a greenhouse grower in Nairobi?
It means the model's own runs produced measurable rain in about 7 out of 10. For a greenhouse the practical question is different from an open field: the rain doesn't land on your crop, but it lands on the roof and the surroundings, humidity inside the structure climbs, and the day's venting strategy changes. The outlook on this page is written for open-field decisions; read it as context and make the venting call from inside the structure.
The forecast says a storm is coming — what should I do about my drip system?
Little, in most cases — a storm is a water event for the soil, not the pipes. What actually matters on storm days is the aftermath: runoff can carry silt into an open intake, and a fast wetting of a dry plot can mask that the profile underneath is still dry. Check the soil after the storm rather than skipping the next cycle on faith, and make sure any tank inlet or first-flush path is clear before heavy rain arrives.
Is the weather-based irrigation outlook useful for container farms?
Yes, with the scale translated. Container and bag crops dry out faster than soil beds and ask for more frequent checks, so the outlook's LOW/MODERATE/HIGH call is best used as a trigger for checking rather than a schedule: HIGH on a rainy day means check whether the bags are already taking on enough; LOW on a hot, windy day means the containers may be ahead of the soil's dry-down. The 24-hour chart is the most useful panel for this use.
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