When to Go: Best Time to Visit

Quick answer: the best time to visit is when the weather suits the trip: warm and dry for a beach, mild for walking a city. By that measure Japan is at its best in spring and autumn (March–May, October–November), Rome and Venice in April and October, New York in September–October, Cancún in February–April and Bali in July–September. Pick any of 173 places above to see its months, or a month to see where the weather is best.

How to use it

Start from a place to get its average daily high and low, how many days it rains, the rainfall, and at beaches in the storm belt how often a hurricane came near, month by month, with a verdict for each month. Or start from a month and a kind of trip (beach, city, tropical city, or mountains and nature) to see every place in the tool that is at its best then, the driest first.

The rule behind “best”

The verdict is a rule, not our taste, so you can see exactly why a month wins:

A best month also has rain (1 mm or more) on 10 days or fewer; a good month on 15 or fewer. At a beach where a tropical storm or hurricane came within 100 miles in that month in 5 or more of the last 50 seasons, the month is good at best. When no month fits, the tool names the one that comes closest and says what is wrong with it.

Best months at popular places

“Good” means no month hit every best mark. Tokyo misses it on rain: in April it rains on about 12 days, so spring and autumn are good rather than best. Guanacaste is driest from January to March, with rain on under 2 days a month, but its highs then (90–96 °F) are above the beach range; December, at 86 °F with rain on about 4 days, is the month that fits.

Where the weather is best in autumn and winter

• October, city: San Francisco, Denver, Cape Town, Athens, Seoul.
• November, beach: Cabo San Lucas, San José del Cabo, Mazatlán, Puerto Vallarta, Acapulco.
• December, city: Cairo, Mexico City, Chiang Mai, Oaxaca, Dubai.
• January, beach: Huatulco, Acapulco, Ixtapa-Zihuatanejo, Puerto Vallarta, Varadero.

Each list starts with the place that has the fewest rainy days that month. Pick the month above for the full list.

Where the numbers come from

NASA’s POWER project publishes daily weather for every point on Earth, from satellite and weather-model data. For each place we averaged every day from 2006 to 2025: 20 years of daily highs, lows and rain. It describes the area of about 50 km around the place, so right on the coast afternoons are often a few degrees warmer than shown (the sea in the same square cools the average), and a mountain town can be cooler. Hurricane counts come from NOAA’s storm tracks, the same data as our hurricane risk calculator.

Plan it

Going to Japan: the first-timer’s guide and what to pack. Florida and the Caribbean: where Florida’s weather is best and which Caribbean island has the best weather. Costa Rica: your first trip.