Qatar Weather in January

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What's the weather in Qatar like in January?

With the Asian Games being held in January 2011, and mutterings of holding the 2022 World Cup in the winter, it is a question being bandied round.

The average foreigner's image of Qatar is of a very hot country, where men wear white to reflect the white hot heat of the sun.

Which is partially true. But not in January.

January Temperatures

In January and February temperatures in Qatar plummet. The cold can't be compared to that of Western countries, though, with the average minimum temperature at just 13°C and the maximum temperature at 21°C.

Averages don't always tell the full story and at times a colder than normal winter drive residents to the shopping malls in a frenzy for heaters, which get rapidly sold out. 2007 was once such year, with Siberian winds sweeping the Peninsula and pushing temperatures down to just 8°C. That was the lowest recorded temperature since 1964, when they fell as low as 4°C.

Rain

Qatar is a hot desert country which experiences just a few centimetres (15, to be precise) of rain a year. Once again, though, averages can deceive - while in some years the Qatar barely has a drop of rain, it can, from time to time, experience a deluge. Once such deluge happened during the Asian Games, when it hammered down during the opening ceremony. Needless to say, most of the rain does come down in the winter.

And here is what it looks like when it does hammer it down: