The onset of the southwest monsoon is anticipated to reach Punjab by May, but since the early 1970s the weather pattern has been irregular. The spring monsoon has either skipped over the area or has caused it to rain so hard that floods have resulted. June and July are oppressively hot.
Although official estimates rarely place the temperature above 46 °C, newspaper sources claim that it reaches 51 °C and regularly carry reports about people who have succumbed to the heat. Heat records were broken in Multan in June 1993, when the mercury was reported to have risen to 54 °C. In August the oppressive heat is punctuated by the rainy season, referred to as barsat, which brings relief in its wake. The hardest part of the summer is then over, but cooler weather does not come until late October.
Recently the province experienced one of the coldest winters in the last 70 years.
Punjab’s region temperature ranges from −2° to 45 °C but can reach 50 °C (122 °F) in summer and can touch down to −10 °C in winter.
Climatically, Punjab has three major seasons:
- Hot weather (April to June) when the temperature rises as high as 110 °F.
- The rainy season (July to September). Average rainfall annual ranges between 96 cm sub-mountain region and 46 cm in the plains.
- Cooler/Foggy/mild weather (October to March). Temperature goes down as low as 40 °F.
