Winter in Afghan cities: how cold Kabul, Herat, Mazar, Kandahar and Jalalabad get

Photo: Haroon Safi

How to read the numbers

The figures below are averages for 2011 to 2025 from Open-Meteo's historical weather data, which combines satellite and weather-station records into a model of each place. Each pair is the average day high / night low in degrees Celsius. "Frost nights" is the share of nights when the temperature fell below zero.

A model smooths out hills and valleys, so a thermometer in your street can differ. The long-term averages in each city's Wikipedia climate table follow the same pattern and are usually within a few degrees. A cold snap can be much colder than any average, and the weather page gives the forecast for the days ahead.

The five cities, December to February

Kabul (about 1,800 metres high) - December: 9 / -4, frost on about 88 percent of nights - January: 4 / -8, frost on about 97 percent of nights - February: 5 / -6, frost on about 89 percent of nights

Herat - December: 13 / 0, frost on about 55 percent of nights - January: 11 / -1, frost on about 65 percent of nights - February: 13 / 1, frost on about 46 percent of nights

Mazar-i-Sharif - December: 10 / 1, frost on about 35 percent of nights - January: 10 / 0, frost on about 43 percent of nights - February: 12 / 2, frost on about 28 percent of nights

Kandahar - December: 15 / 1, frost on about 36 percent of nights - January: 13 / 1, frost on about 45 percent of nights - February: 15 / 3, frost on about 27 percent of nights

Jalalabad - December: 17 / 6, frost on about 1 percent of nights - January: 15 / 4, frost on about 5 percent of nights - February: 17 / 6, frost on about 1 percent of nights

What this means for each city

Photo: Todd Huffman · CC BY 2.0

• Kabul: the only one of the five where the day high stays near or below 5 degrees in January and nights freeze almost every time. Winter here is long: nights are already around 2 degrees in November, and frost on about half the nights lasts into March.
• Herat: cold nights, but days of 11 to 13 degrees. Frost is common from December to February and rare by March.
• Mazar-i-Sharif: milder than Herat at night; frost on fewer than half the nights, even in January.
• Kandahar: the days are warm for winter, 13 to 15 degrees, and frost comes on about a quarter to a half of the nights, depending on the month.
• Jalalabad: hardly any frost. A winter day is closer to a cool spring day elsewhere. The mountains above it are snowy, though, and the pass roads are a different matter.

In November the day highs run from about 14 in Kabul to about 21 in Jalalabad, and the nights are from about 2 in Kabul to about 11 in Jalalabad. That is the month to get the heating ready.

What to do with it

• Check the road before you travel. Snow closes passes even when the city at the other end is mild. See the roads and passes page and our piece on the Salang tunnel in winter.
• Heat safely. In the cities with the most frost, heating is where people get hurt. Read staying warm safely before you light a heater, sandali or coal fire.
• Check the forecast for your city on the weather page before a journey.

Never sleep in a closed room with a charcoal or gas fire burning. Carbon monoxide has no smell. If someone is poisoned, take them into fresh air and call 102.