The part of Croatia that is best known and most visited by tourists is the Dalmatian coast and its offshore islands in the Adriatic Sea. This region has a Mediterranean type of climate with mild winters and warm, sunny summers. The coast is backed by the high mountains of the Dinaric Alps, rising to 1,200-1,800 m/4,000-6,000 ft. Winter rainfall here is heavy.
The table for Dubrovnik is characteristic of weather on the Dalmatian coast of Croatia.
An unpleasant feature of the winter weather is a cold gusty wind, the bora, which brings cold air from central and eastern Europe down to the coast for a few days at a time; it blows particularly violently in the north of the Adriatic. Summers on this coast are not entirely rainless, and the fine, sunny weather is often interrupted by thunderstorms. Sunshine averages some four hours a day in winter and from ten to twelve hours a day in summer.
Inland climatic conditions rapidly become more typical of eastern Europe with cold winters and warm summers; summer here is the wettest season. Much of inland Croatia is mountainous or hilly, and winter snow lies for long periods in the higher regions. The table for Sarajevo in Bosnia-Herzegovina shows conditions that are also typical of the more mountainous parts of Croatia. Eastern Croatia includes much low-lying land in the valleys of the Danube, Drave, and Save; here winters are rather cold and rainfall lower. The table for Belgrade in Serbia represents similar conditions.
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