The best time to visit Yucatán

Maya cities, cenotes and a Caribbean coast — flat limestone country with a hurricane season to plan around. The yucatan barely has a temperature season: daytime highs move only about 5 °C across the whole year, from 27 °C in January to 32 °C in August. What changes instead is rain.

Measured against a beach trip, the conditions hold up December to April. January is the most consistent single month: highs near 27 °C, nights around 21 °C, and roughly 46 mm of rain across the month.

What rules months out here is rainfall, not any composite judgement. Rainfall is sharply seasonal: September averages 159 mm against 16 mm in March, so the wet season is the real planning constraint rather than heat or cold. June is the weakest month on these criteria.

May and November sit just outside the window, with part of the month working and part not. These are usually the interesting weeks: conditions are close to the peak-season answer while prices and crowds are not. The map lets you check them fortnight by fortnight rather than trusting a monthly average.

What the Yucatan is known for

Chichen Itza's El Castillo casts a serpent shadow down its staircase at the equinoxes
Cenotes are collapsed limestone sinkholes filled with fresh water; the peninsula has thousands
Tulum is the only major Maya city built on the coast
The Sian Ka'an reserve and the Great Maya Reef, the world's second-largest barrier reef, run south from Tulum

Month by month

Month	High °C	Low °C	Precip mm	Wet days
January	27	21	46	10.0
February	28	21	39	7.6
March	30	22	16	6.7
April	31	24	31	7.0
May	32	25	97	12.7
June	31	25	130	19.5
July	32	25	117	18.5
August	32	25	124	21.1
September	31	25	159	23.3
October	30	24	156	19.9
November	28	23	82	12.0
December	27	21	38	10.7

Ticked rows are months where every hard requirement for a beach trip is met across at least half the month.

Open Yucatán on the map →

Tulum, Mexico © Nirzar Pangarkar nirzar, CC0 · cropped and resized · Wikimedia Commons

Mérida, Mexico © Jorge Zapata jorgezapatag, CC0 · cropped and resized · Wikimedia Commons

Nearby regions

Figures are 30-year climatology sampled at Cancun, Tulum, Merida, Playa del Carmen and Valladolid, averaged across those locations, from ERA5-Land reanalysis fitted with a harmonic seasonal cycle and a trend term, evaluated for 2026. Sampling named towns rather than averaging the whole region avoids blending valley and mountain conditions into a figure true of neither. Cells are about 0.08° wide, from ERA5-Land's 0.1° grid, which is itself driven by a 0.25° (~28 km) atmospheric reanalysis — so individual valleys, sheltered bays and single summits are not resolved. In steep terrain read these as conditions for the wider area rather than for one village. They describe typical conditions, not a forecast. Read how the climatology is built.