Rajasthan is India's largest state by area and its most arid, split diagonally by the Aravalli Range into the Thar Desert to the northwest and comparatively wetter semi-arid plains to the southeast. It records some of the country's most extreme heat and among its lowest, most unreliable rainfall. For live interactive rainfall, wind and satellite maps over Rajasthan, open VayuMet.
The Aravalli Range runs roughly northeast to southwest across the state, one of the world's oldest mountain systems, now heavily eroded to modest elevations. West and northwest of the Aravallis lies the Thar Desert — sandy, sparsely vegetated and among the driest regions in India. East and southeast of the range, rainfall and vegetation improve, transitioning through semi-arid plains to the Hadoti plateau in the southeast, which shares more climatically with neighbouring Madhya Pradesh.
Winter (December-February) brings cold nights, especially in the desert where clear skies and low humidity produce one of India's largest diurnal temperature ranges, punctuated by occasional western-disturbance rain and cold-wave spells. Pre-monsoon summer (March-June) is extreme, with west Rajasthan among the hottest places in the country. The monsoon (July-September) is highly uneven — the Aravallis roughly mark a wet/dry divide, with the Thar receiving a small fraction of what the southeast gets. Post-monsoon (October-November) is dry and mild statewide.
Western disturbances bring the state's main winter precipitation (rare but locally significant rain and even hail) to north Rajasthan, and the clear, calm air following a disturbance's passage often produces the region's sharpest cold-wave nights.
West Rajasthan (Churu, Phalodi, Barmer, Sri Ganganagar) regularly registers among the highest temperatures recorded anywhere in India each summer, well above IMD's heatwave threshold for extended periods.
Rajasthan's monsoon rain depends on Bay of Bengal-origin depressions and the monsoon trough extending unusually far northwest via Madhya Pradesh; east Rajasthan benefits far more often than the Thar, which some years receives almost no organised monsoon system at all.
Dry, intensely heated air over the desert produces frequent dust storms and dust-raising winds ahead of monsoon onset, occasionally severe enough to disrupt visibility and transport.
Frequencies cited from published IMD/IITM climatology where a source is named inline; day-count figures in the table below are computed directly from the 1951–2025 IMD daily archive.
The table below is a state-wide average across Rajasthan's 33 districts, built from IMD's real 1991-2020 gridded rainfall/temperature normals and 1951-2025 daily archives (not a forecast). Because this blends the arid Thar districts with the comparatively wetter southeast, the state average understates just how extreme conditions get in the desert districts — use the district climatology tool linked below for any single district's own figures.
| Season | Rainfall (mm) | Rain days | Mean Max / Min (°C) | Typical Hottest / Coldest (°C) | Sky (Sunny·Partly·Overcast days) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Winter Jan–Feb | 13.6 | 2.7 | 24.5 / 10.8 | 29.0 / 8.2 | 25.8·33.2·0.0 |
| Pre-Monsoon (Summer) Mar–May | 27.1 | 5.8 | 36.9 / 22.8 | 41.8 / 15.0 | 35.4·56.5·0.1 |
| Monsoon (SW) Jun–Sep | 483.7 | 53.9 | 35.0 / 26.2 | 41.2 / 23.4 | 17.1·91.8·13.1 |
| Post-Monsoon Oct–Dec | 19.3 | 3.8 | 29.5 / 15.4 | 35.6 / 8.6 | 54.9·37.1·0.0 |
State figures are a simple average across 33 member districts (IMD Pune 1991–2020 normal; day-count and sky figures from real 1951–2025 daily archives — see District Climatology tool for any single district's own numbers, which can differ substantially from this state average).
Computed directly from the real IMD 1951–2025 daily gridded archive — not a forecast, and not the same as a single-station record. IMD's gridded temperature is 1°×1° (~111 km/cell) and rainfall is 0.25°×0.25° (~25 km/cell); both are spatial analyses of many station observations; a famous single-station record (e.g. a specific town's all-time hottest day) will typically read higher than the grid-cell value shown here, since one station reading isn't smoothed over a ~25–111 km box. "Place" is the nearest district to the grid cell where the extreme occurred, not necessarily the exact spot.
Pre-monsoon (Apr-Jun). West Rajasthan sees the most severe and sustained heatwave conditions in India, with serious public-health implications.
Structural / monsoon-shortfall years. The Thar region is chronically water-scarce even in an average monsoon year, and a below-normal season deepens an already tight water balance.
Winter (Dec-Jan). Clear post-western-disturbance nights over the desert produce some of north India's sharpest winter cold snaps despite the region's hot summers.
Monsoon (rare, high-impact years). Though rare, an unusually active monsoon system reaching the desert can cause serious flash flooding on terrain and infrastructure not built to handle it, as in the 2006 Barmer floods.
Click a district on the District Climatology tool or search it on the 10-day forecast page for its own normals — the grid below is the full current list (India's Local Government Directory codes, cross-checked against the latest state reorganisation).