The northern tip of Borneo: a 4,095 m peak, orangutan forest and some of the best diving in the world. Sabah, borneo barely has a temperature season: daytime highs move only about 2 °C across the whole year, from 27 °C in January to 29 °C in May. What changes instead is rain.
On a strict reading, no month in Sabah, Borneo clears every threshold for a hiking trip — the limits below are absolute, not relative to the region. That does not make it a bad destination; it means the trip has to be planned around a specific constraint rather than a season.
The binding constraint here is temperature and rainfall — that is what rules months out, not any composite judgement. January is the weakest month on these criteria.
What Sabah, Borneo is known for
- Mount Kinabalu is the highest peak between the Himalaya and New Guinea; the summit climb takes two days
- Sepilok's rehabilitation centre and the Kinabatangan river are the most reliable places to see wild orangutans
- Sipadan, off Semporna, is a permit-limited dive site on an oceanic seamount
- Danum Valley holds some of the oldest undisturbed lowland rainforest in the world
- Rafflesia, the largest single flower on Earth, blooms unpredictably in the Crocker Range
Month by month
| Month | High °C | Low °C | Precip mm | Wet days |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| January | 27 | 23 | 274 | 26.9 |
| February | 27 | 23 | 203 | 22.6 |
| March | 28 | 23 | 192 | 24.7 |
| April | 29 | 23 | 209 | 25.4 |
| May | 29 | 23 | 245 | 27.3 |
| June | 29 | 23 | 224 | 25.3 |
| July | 29 | 23 | 202 | 23.8 |
| August | 29 | 23 | 208 | 24.4 |
| September | 28 | 23 | 230 | 25.5 |
| October | 28 | 23 | 259 | 28.2 |
| November | 28 | 23 | 268 | 28.5 |
| December | 27 | 23 | 304 | 28.9 |
Ticked rows are months where every hard requirement for a hiking trip is met across at least half the month.
By trip type
| Hiking | no month clears every limit |
| Beach | no month clears every limit |
Each row applies that trip type's own hard limits to the same climate data.
Open Borneo (Sabah) on the map →
Nearby regions
Figures are 30-year climatology sampled at Kota Kinabalu, Sandakan, Semporna and Kundasang, averaged across those locations, from ERA5-Land reanalysis fitted with a harmonic seasonal cycle and a trend term, evaluated for 2026. Sampling named towns rather than averaging the whole region avoids blending valley and mountain conditions into a figure true of neither. Cells are about 0.08° wide, from ERA5-Land's 0.1° grid, which is itself driven by a 0.25° (~28 km) atmospheric reanalysis — so individual valleys, sheltered bays and single summits are not resolved. In steep terrain read these as conditions for the wider area rather than for one village. They describe typical conditions, not a forecast. Read how the climatology is built.