Alpine weather: two stations, real numbers

Passo Rolle, at 6,575 feet (2,004 m) in the Dolomites, averages 37.8°F (3.2°C) across the year, spends five months below freezing from November to March, and peaks in July at a mean daily maximum of 61.2°F (16.2°C).

High ground: Passo Rolle month by month

February is the coldest month at the pass, mean 24.1°F (-4.4°C), with a mean daily minimum of 18.1°F (-7.7°C). No month in the record reaches a mean of 12°C.

Monthly means, in °F with °C in brackets:

The annual mean is 37.8°F (3.2°C), the annual mean minimum 32.2°F (0.1°C), a value ISPRA confirms on its own homogenized series.

Valley floor: Dobbiaco at 4,009 feet (1,222 m)

Dobbiaco averages 43.7°F (6.5°C) over the year, and its January, at 25.2°F (-3.8°C) mean and 18.1°F (-7.7°C) mean minimum, is colder than any lowland Italian city. July repays the winter with 61.9°F (16.6°C²) mean and a mean maximum of 72.7°F (22.6°C).

That combination, hard winters and cool summers, is what an inhabited Alpine valley actually offers. It is a different climate from the pass above it, not a milder version of the same one.

Rain arrives in July, not in October

Paganella, at 6,972 feet (2,125³ m), records 830.1 mm³ a year, with July the wettest month at 109.5 mm³ and January the driest at 20.1 mm³. Its annual mean temperature is 36.7°F (2.6°C).

That is the Alpine regime, and it is the exact reverse of the south, where summer is the dry season. Cortina d'Ampezzo, at Gilardon, 3,990 feet (1,216³ m), reaches 1,135.3 mm³ a year according to ISPRA, with 142.7 mm³ in August and 131.6 mm³ in November against 47.7 mm³ in January. The Cortina figure comes from an interactive query that cannot be reproduced from a fixed address, so treat it with more reserve than the others.

Dobbiaco has no annual rainfall total

December at Dobbiaco falls below the validity threshold of 24 valid years out of 30, so the annual total does not exist, and adding the 11 published months would be inventing it. July alone is 122.8 mm², August 104.3 mm, January 23.0 mm.

Bolzano city is absent from the WMO 1991-2020 series altogether. Dobbiaco stands in for the inhabited valley floor because it has a complete temperature record.

What this means for a July walk

In July, 4.7°C of mean temperature separates Passo Rolle from Dobbiaco across 2,566 feet (782 m) of altitude, and July is also the wettest month up there. Plan a start early enough to be off the exposed ground by mid-afternoon, and carry a shell even when the valley is at 72.7°F (22.6°C).

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