Agrigento Climate Patterns

Agrigento faces south into the African sea and has one of the hottest, driest climates in Italy.

Summer

June to September is reliably hot and effectively rainless, with highs commonly 31 to 33°C in July and August and weeks of cloudless sky. The ridge catches a sea breeze that the interior does not, so the town is more bearable than the towns inland, but the archaeological park has almost no shade and midday there in August is genuinely punishing.

The scirocco

The wind off North Africa is a real feature of this coast rather than an occasional curiosity. It can lift temperatures past 40°C for days at a stretch, most often between May and September, and it arrives carrying fine reddish Saharan dust that settles on everything.

Winter

Winter is mild and green. January and February highs run around 15 to 16°C, frost is unknown at this altitude, and the hills turn briefly green before drying out again in April. The almonds flower in early February, which is why the festival falls when it does.

Rain and water

Around 450 to 500 millimetres a year, low even by Sicilian standards, falling almost entirely between October and February and often in short, heavy bursts. Summer drought is the normal condition and water supply is a long-standing local problem.

What it grows

This climate is what the province lives on: almonds, olives, durum wheat and table grapes, the last a speciality of Canicattì inland. Everything depends on winter rain rather than summer irrigation.

The sea

Warm from June into late October, which makes San Leone usable for a good five months of the year, longer than almost anywhere else in Italy.