Guanacaste and Nicoya — a dry season sharp enough that the landscape changes colour with it. Costa rica's pacific coast barely has a temperature season: daytime highs move only about 4 °C across the whole year, from 27 °C in October to 32 °C in March. What changes instead is rain.
Measured against a beach trip, the conditions hold up December to March. January is the most consistent single month: highs near 30 °C, nights around 23 °C, and roughly 14 mm of rain across the month.
What rules months out here is rainfall, not any composite judgement. Rainfall is sharply seasonal: October averages 406 mm against 5 mm in March, so the wet season is the real planning constraint rather than heat or cold. May is the weakest month on these criteria.
April sits just outside the window, with part of the month working and part not. These are usually the interesting weeks: conditions are close to the peak-season answer while prices and crowds are not. The map lets you check them fortnight by fortnight rather than trusting a monthly average.
What Costa Rica's Pacific coast is known for
- Manuel Antonio packs rainforest, sloths and beaches into Costa Rica's smallest national park
- Corcovado on the Osa Peninsula holds an estimated 2.5 percent of the planet's biodiversity
- Olive ridley turtles arrive in mass arribadas at Ostional, thousands at a time
- Guanacaste's dry forest loses its leaves in the dry months, unlike the rest of the country
Month by month
| Month | High °C | Low °C | Precip mm | Wet days |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| January | 30 | 23 | 14 | 3.0 |
| February | 31 | 23 | 18 | 1.8 |
| March | 32 | 24 | 5 | 3.7 |
| April | 31 | 24 | 78 | 11.7 |
| May | 30 | 24 | 264 | 24.6 |
| June | 28 | 24 | 338 | 27.5 |
| July | 28 | 24 | 279 | 25.7 |
| August | 29 | 24 | 279 | 27.3 |
| September | 28 | 23 | 385 | 28.8 |
| October | 27 | 23 | 406 | 29.2 |
| November | 28 | 23 | 208 | 20.1 |
| December | 29 | 23 | 40 | 8.3 |
Ticked rows are months where every hard requirement for a beach trip is met across at least half the month.
Open Pacific Costa Rica on the map →
Nearby regions
Figures are 30-year climatology sampled at Tamarindo, Nosara, Samara, Liberia and Santa Teresa, 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.