Climate

The Philippines has a tropical marine climate dominated by a rainy season and a dry season. The summer monsoon brings heavy rains to most of the archipelago from May to October, whereas the winter monsoon brings cooler and drier air from December to February. Manila and most of the lowland areas are hot and dusty from March to May. Even at this time, however, temperatures rarely rise above 37 °C. Mean annual sea-level temperatures rarely fall below 27 °C. Annual rainfall measures as much as 500 cm in the mountainous east coast section of the country, but less than 100 cm in some of the sheltered valleys.

Seasons

There are three recognised seasons:

• Tag-init or Tag-araw (the hot season or summer from March to May)
• Tag-ulan (the rainy season from June to November)
• Taglamig (the cold season from December to February)

Monsoons and Typhoons

The southwest monsoon (May-October) is known as the 'habagat' and the dry winds of the northeast monsoon (November-April) as the 'amihan'. Monsoon rains, although hard and drenching, are not normally associated with high winds and waves.

However, the Philippines sit astride the typhoon belt, and it suffers an annual onslaught of dangerous storms from July through October. These are especially hazardous for northern and eastern Luzon and the Bicol and Eastern Visayas regions, but Manila gets devastated periodically as well.