October 2026 was the sixth-hottest October in Pakistan in sixty-six years, the Pakistan Meteorological Department has said in its monthly climate report, with warm nights in particular among the hottest ever recorded. The findings add another warm month to a year in which the country’s weather has repeatedly run hotter than normal.
According to the department, Pakistan’s average temperature during October stood at twenty-five point two degrees Celsius, which was one point two degrees above the long-term normal for the month. That placed October 2026 sixth in the national rankings stretching back sixty-six years. The average maximum daytime temperature was recorded at thirty-two point one degrees, but it was the nights that told the more striking story. The average nighttime temperature ran two point three degrees above normal, making October 2026 the third-hottest October on record for warm nights.
The country received an average rainfall of just nine point two millimetres during the month, underlining how dry it was across much of the country, with the heat arriving alongside very little rain to break it.
The result had been forecast. The department’s monthly outlook for October, issued on the first of the month, expected above-normal temperatures across the whole country, with the largest rise over Gilgit-Baltistan and western Balochistan. The early days of the month matched that expectation, with daytime highs forecast at thirty-six to thirty-eight degrees in Lahore, thirty-seven to thirty-nine in Faisalabad and Multan, and forty-one to forty-three in Dadu and Nawabshah in Sindh.
October did not arrive as an isolated warm month. September 2026 had also run hot, with mean temperatures one to three degrees above normal across most of the country, and Quetta as much as four degrees above normal. September’s rain was below normal in most of Pakistan, at twenty point six millimetres against a normal of twenty-nine point three, a shortfall of nearly thirty per cent. Sindh fared worst, receiving just three point two millimetres against a normal of thirty-one point one, a shortfall of almost ninety per cent. The department’s drought monitoring centre, which weighs rain, heat, soil moisture and plant health together, found normal conditions and no drought anywhere in the country for September, but the heat itself was already building.
The longer record shows a clear drift. The National Disaster Management Authority’s seasonal outlook, which reviewed October temperatures from 2020 to 2025, found that the two earliest years were comparatively cooler, while the years from 2022 onwards were generally warmer. October 2024 stood out as the most pronounced warmth of the period, with temperatures reaching thirty-six to thirty-nine degrees in parts of Sindh and thirty to thirty-six across parts of Balochistan. The same review noted that post-monsoon cooling is increasingly delayed, particularly across southern Pakistan, which can increase heat and evaporation stress during October, a month when farmers and cities alike expect the weather to ease.
That delay matters because October is a month of transition. The monsoon has ended, the summer heat is supposed to fade, and the winter wheat sowing season begins in the plains. When nights stay warm, crops, livestock and people all feel the difference: warm nights give the body less recovery time after a hot day, keep demand for fans and water high when both should be falling, and can affect germination and the growth of young crops, while dry conditions add to the pressure on irrigation.
The rainfall picture was uneven. The October outlook had expected near-normal to above-normal rain in the north, with the south, and especially southern Sindh, likely to receive slightly below-normal rain. The month’s national average of nine point two millimetres suggests that the dry south dominated the picture.
The department’s records go back sixty-six years, which makes a sixth-place ranking a meaningful signal rather than a passing anomaly. A single warm month can be explained by a weather pattern, but the pattern of recent years, with 2022 to 2025 all warmer than the years before them, points to a longer warming trend. The country has already lived through the consequences of that trend, from the devastating floods of 2022 to repeated heatwaves that have pushed temperatures above fifty degrees in Sindh.
Looking ahead, the seasonal outlook expects temperatures to stay above normal through November and December, with the strongest warm signals over northern and western parts of the country. Rainfall is expected to be normal to above normal over most of the country, particularly in the northern and central regions.
For a country where most people work outdoors, where millions depend on farming, and where electricity and water systems are already stretched, a warmer October is not an abstract statistic. It is hotter days in the fields, warmer nights in homes without air conditioning, and more water drawn from rivers and aquifers that are already under strain. The Pakistan Meteorological Department will publish its November figures in due course, and they will show whether the warmth continues into winter. For now, October 2026 stands as the sixth-hottest in sixty-six years, and its nights as the third-warmest, a reminder that the season of relief is arriving later than it used to.
