Melfi Climate Patterns

Melfi has an inland climate with real seasons, quite unlike the Basilicatan coast.

Summer

July and August are hot and dry, with highs usually between 30 and 33°C, though the altitude means nights cool down properly and the humidity is low. It is more comfortable than the Puglian plain immediately east.

Winter

Winter is cold. January highs sit around 8 to 9°C, frost is frequent, and snow falls most years in the town and regularly on Monte Vulture above it. The upper slopes can hold snow for weeks.

Rain

Around 700 millimetres a year, higher than most of Basilicata, because the mountain intercepts weather. Autumn and winter are genuinely wet, and the Vulture slopes are green in a way the rest of the region is not.

Spring and autumn

The best of the year. May and June are green, warm and clear; September and October bring the grape harvest and then the chestnuts, with the beech woods around the lakes turning. October here is the single best time to visit.

Up at the lakes

Monticchio, in its craters at around 700 metres and enclosed by beech forest, runs cooler and damper than the town and is the obvious place to be in August. Mist sits in the craters on autumn mornings, and the woods turn late — the colour usually peaks in the first half of November, weeks after the vineyards below have been picked.

Altitude matters

Between the town at 530 metres and the summit at 1,326 there can be a difference of six or seven degrees and an entirely different season on the ground.