מזג האוויר בסן חוסה במרץ

March is inside the driest and hottest stretch of the Costa Rican year, and our row's 19.7 precipitation days would say otherwise until you read the phrase regulars use: intermittent thunderstorms that do not produce much rain. That is 87.4mm spread across those days, under five millimetres each. Being socked in for days would be strange now; rain is always possible and rarely severe. What the dry season does bring is heat on the coast - 29.6C over a 25.4C night reads as 36C and 30C at 77 percent humidity, and with the Pacific at 29.9C there is nothing cool to get into. Their own figures, high 80s by day and mid 70s at night, match ours closely. The record: 11 hours of sun, a 12.4 kph wind and AQI 38.

Forum posters generally rate August as a good month to visit Costa Rica overall, describing a typical lowland or coastal day as sunny and hot in the morning with rain, sometimes heavy, moving in during the afternoon or evening - a pattern posters say leaves the landscape noticeably greener. San Jose itself, at over 1,100m elevation, runs noticeably milder than those hotter coastal descriptions, with comfortable daytime highs rather than genuine heat. Posters are direct that late August specifically can turn genuinely rainy, and while Pacific-slope rain is usually confined to afternoon and evening, posters emphasize there's no guarantee during rainy season. One visitor's second-half-of-August trip found mostly good weather, though posters are consistent that predicting exact conditions for specific dates isn't really possible. Posters generally rate August as workable and even good for a San José-area visit, rain gear recommended regardless.

February is deep in Costa Rica's dry season, and San José sits at altitude, so it runs cooler than the coasts — near 26°C by day, dropping to 17 at night. "Dry season" is the forum's own phrase and their own caveat: it does not mean it cannot rain, and eight wet days is the record's answer. Regulars pack an umbrella regardless. Two regional notes matter more than the capital's own weather: the Caribbean side is reliably rainier and cloudier than the Pacific in February, and Guanacaste gets serious wind this month while La Fortuna, Monteverde and Manuel Antonio generally do not.