Guide
How the Festival Weather Score Works
A full explanation of the 0–100 festival weather score: how rainfall sets the ceiling, how feels-like day and night temperatures move it, and why thunderstorms cap the result.
One number, per day
Every festival day gets a single score from 0 to 100 that answers one question: what are the chances this is great festival weather? It is deliberately tuned for people standing in a field for twelve hours and sleeping in a tent afterwards — not for meteorological perfection. A festival's headline score is the average of its individual days.
Data comes from Open-Meteo: live forecasts once a festival is within range, and around 15 years of archive data at the venue coordinates before that. Temperatures are apparent ("feels like") values, so wind chill and humidity are already baked in.
1. Rain sets the ceiling
Rain is the single thing most likely to ruin a festival day, so it does not simply subtract points — it caps how high the day can score at all. Total daily precipitation is mapped onto a maximum score, with values in between interpolated linearly.
| Daily rainfall | Max score | What it feels like |
|---|---|---|
| 0 mm | 100 | Dry. Nothing holds the score back. |
| 2 mm | 95 | A passing shower — barely noticeable over a full day. |
| 5 mm | 85 | Wet spells; the ground starts to soften. |
| 7 mm | 70 | Persistent rain for part of the day. |
| 10 mm | 50 | A properly wet day. Mud is likely. |
| 15 mm | 20 | Heavy, sustained rain. |
| 20 mm+ | 0 | Washout. |
So a 12 mm day cannot score above about 38, no matter how pleasant the temperature is.
2. Temperature moves it within the ceiling
Day and night are judged separately, because they cause different kinds of misery. Both have a wide comfort plateau where no points are lost at all.
Daytime high
- 20–32°C: no penalty. The full comfort plateau.
- 18–20°C: a soft edge worth roughly 3 points per degree, so a dry 18°C day still lands around 90.
- Below 18°C: a steeper slope — cold, exposed days add up.
- Above 32°C: a gentle heat penalty; uncomfortable, but rarely trip-ruining.
Overnight low
- 10–24°C: no penalty. Normal camping weather with a normal sleeping bag.
- 8–10°C: almost nothing.
- 5–8°C: a mild penalty — you'll notice it, you'll survive it.
- Below 5°C: escalating quickly, and sub-zero nights are treated as severe.
- Above 24°C: a muggy-night penalty — tents don't cool down.
The two penalties are combined into a single multiplier applied to the rain ceiling. A perfect-temperature day keeps the full ceiling; a cold, bitter one might keep only half of it.
3. Thunderstorms cap the result
A thunderstorm in the forecast caps the day at 65, even when the total rainfall looks modest. Storms bring stage pauses, evacuations and hail risk, none of which shows up in a millimetre count.
Reading the score
- 85–100 — great festival weather. Sunscreen, not waterproofs.
- 70–85 — good, with one thing to plan for: a shower, a cool night, or real heat.
- 50–70 — mixed. Pack for both and the weekend still works.
- Below 50 — the weather is going to be part of the story. Boots, dry bags, spare socks.
Right now the strongest long-run averages in our index belong to Burning Man (100), EDC Las Vegas (100) and Coachella (99).