São Paulo Weather Radar & Live Storm & Drought Map

São Paulo is the largest city in the Southern Hemisphere, a vast metropolis perched on a plateau in southeastern Brazil — and its weather is a study in contrasts. Summers bring drenching thunderstorms and the flooding that comes with them; dry stretches can pull the city's reservoirs toward crisis; and winter cold fronts sweeping up from the far south give this tropical-latitude city a surprising chill. The hazards here swing between too much water and too little, and reading which way the balance is tipping is exactly what the live map is for.

Summer: storms and flooding

São Paulo's wet season runs through the Southern Hemisphere summer, roughly October to March, when hot, humid afternoons brew frequent and sometimes violent thunderstorms. These storms can dump a great deal of rain in a short time, and the city's rivers and low-lying districts are prone to flash flooding when they do. For a metropolis this large and densely built, a single intense downpour can snarl traffic and inundate neighbourhoods within hours. The radar is the layer to watch closely through these months.

The other extreme: drought and the reservoirs

For all its rainy summers, São Paulo's water security is surprisingly fragile. The city draws on reservoir systems that depend on consistent rainfall to stay topped up, and when the rains fall short for a stretch — especially in the drier winter months, and worsened by heat — supplies can drop alarmingly. In the mid-2010s the city endured a severe water crisis, its main reservoir system falling to critically low levels with rationing looming over millions of people.

It was a stark lesson that a rainfall deficit, compounded by evaporation in the heat, can turn into an existential problem even for a city used to summer downpours. Watching the longer-term balance of wet and dry spells — not just the next storm — is part of reading São Paulo's weather. The larger El Niño and La Niña cycle in the Pacific tilts the odds of wet or dry years across Brazil, forming part of the backdrop to these swings.

Winter's surprising chill

Because São Paulo sits on a plateau at altitude, it's cooler than its near-tropical latitude would suggest, and in winter it can feel genuinely cold. Cold fronts sweeping north from the southern reaches of South America bring sharp temperature drops, grey skies and damp, chilly spells. Frost is rare within the city but occurs in surrounding areas. It gives São Paulo more seasonal variety than many expect of a Brazilian city, and it's a reminder that altitude, not just latitude, shapes a place's climate.

Reading it on the live map

São Paulo rewards watching the swing between too much water and too little:

• In summer, watch the storms. Turn on Radar to follow afternoon thunderstorms and see where the heaviest rain and flood risk are concentrated.
• Track the balance. Use the Precipitation layer to follow wet and dry spells over time — the trend that decides whether the reservoirs stay healthy.
• Mind the cold fronts. In winter, Temperature shows the southern fronts sweeping in.
• Connect the cycle. The drought-and-water and El Niño guides explain how a dry stretch becomes a supply crisis, and how the Pacific cycle tilts Brazil wet or dry.

Radar tells you when the rain is flooding the city; the precipitation trend tells you whether the reservoirs are in trouble. In a megacity that lurches between deluge and drought, reading that balance is how you see which extreme is coming next.