Winter sun in December: where it is actually warm and dry

Every winter the same photographs come round, and none of them carry a number. So we went and got the numbers.

What follows is the average of ten Decembers, 2015 to 2024, from the ERA5 reanalysis: mean daily maximum, mean daily minimum, total rainfall for the month and the average count of days with at least 1 mm of rain. A reanalysis is a model grid rather than the thermometer at the airport, so treat a tenth of a degree as noise and the ranking as solid. The rain days are the number that changes holidays, and almost nobody publishes them.

First, the baseline you are escaping

December at home, same method: London 9.2 degrees and 12 wet days, Berlin 5.5 and 13 wet days, Milan 7.9 and 7 wet days. That is the bar. Anything above roughly 20 degrees with single figure rain days is a genuinely different month, not a slightly better one.

The Mediterranean promise, and what the data says

This is where most winter sun searches end up, and it is the weakest answer on the list.

• Malta: 17.2 degrees, 7.6 wet days.
• Malaga: 17.6 degrees, 5.0 wet days.
• Faro: 17.2 degrees, 6.4 wet days.
• Larnaca, Cyprus: 18.2 degrees, 8.3 wet days. Cyprus has the warmest reputation of the four and the most rain of the four.

Seventeen degrees is a pleasant lunch outside and a cold evening. It is not a beach. If the picture in your head involves swimming, the Mediterranean in December will not produce it, and Cyprus least of all.

The Canaries, where the island matters more than the archipelago

The Canaries are the closest real winter sun to Europe, but they are not interchangeable.

• Lanzarote: 20.4 degrees, 6 mm of rain, 1.4 wet days. The driest place in this entire comparison outside Egypt.
• Gran Canaria (south): 22.3 degrees, 14 mm, 2.3 wet days. The warmest of the three, and dry.
• Tenerife (south): 20.6 degrees, 34 mm, 5.9 wet days. Same warmth as Lanzarote with four times the rain days.

And the one that surprises people: Madeira, 19.7 degrees but 81 mm of rain across 10.6 wet days. Madeira in December is mild and genuinely wet. It is a walking island in winter, not a beach island. Nothing wrong with that, as long as you booked it knowing.

Morocco: two very different holidays

• Agadir: 22.0 degrees by day, 12.5 at night, 2.0 wet days. The best balance of warmth and dryness within four hours of northern Europe.
• Marrakech: 21.0 degrees by day and 6.9 at night. Look at that gap. Marrakech in December is a warm afternoon and a genuinely cold evening, and riads with a courtyard can be colder inside than out. Pack for both, and check that the heating is real: it is one of the things worth asking before booking, along with everything else in how to choose the right neighbourhood. The city itself is covered in Marrakech.

Egypt and the Gulf: where dry stops being an adjective

• Hurghada: 22.6 degrees, 0.1 wet days in the whole month.
• Sharm el-Sheikh: 24.2 degrees, 0.4 wet days.
• Dubai: 26.4 degrees, 1.2 wet days. See Dubai.
• Doha: 24.7 degrees, 1.4 wet days. See Doha.

These are the places where December stops being a compromise. The Red Sea in particular is the only part of this list where you can plan a beach week in December and expect the weather to cooperate almost every day. Nights are cooler than the brochures suggest: 15 degrees in Hurghada, so an evening layer is not optional.

Long haul, where the obvious answers are wrong

This is the section that changes bookings.

• Bangkok: 31.0 degrees, 3.7 wet days. December is the dry season and it shows. See Bangkok.
• Phuket: 29.0 degrees but 133 mm across 16.4 wet days. Half the days in December see rain. Phuket is hot and wet in December, not hot and dry. See Phuket.
• Maldives: 28.1 degrees, 219 mm across 18.9 wet days. The most photographed December destination in the world is also, on this data, the wettest place in this comparison. It is still warm, the rain is often short, and the sea is 28 degrees, but nineteen days with rain is not the postcard. There is more on the seasons in the Maldives rainy season and on what a week there costs in the Maldives on a budget.
• Cancun: 26.9 degrees, 14.4 wet days. Warmer than Europe, wetter than its reputation. See Cancun.
• Cape Town: 23.8 degrees, 5.1 wet days. December is high summer in the southern hemisphere and the driest half of the Cape year, which makes it the best value proposition on this list if you can absorb the flight. See Cape Town.

How to read this before you book

Three rules come straight out of the table.

1. Rank on wet days, not on degrees. Twenty degrees with 1.4 wet days beats twenty-two with six. The temperature decides what you wear; the rain decides what you do. 2. Look at the night, not just the day. Marrakech at 6.9 degrees and Hurghada at 15.6 are the same holiday on paper and a different one in practice. 3. December is not one month. The first half is cheaper and quieter almost everywhere; the last ten days are the most expensive nights of the winter, for reasons that have nothing to do with weather and everything to do with demand, which is what hotel dynamic pricing is about. If your dates are movable, moving them a week is worth more than choosing between two islands.

When you have picked a direction, compare the same hotels across platforms for your dates: hotels in Marrakech, hotels in Dubai, hotels in Bangkok, or open destinations and work backwards from the map. And if the trip lands over the holidays, read what changes then in New Year's Eve hotels.