Weather locations in Mexico

Mexico is enormous and spans almost every climate available in the Americas except the ice caps, from desert in the north to tropical rainforest in the south. Latitude, altitude and the seasonality of rain do more to shape the weather than any single rule.

Main climate types

The northern states of Sonora, Chihuahua and Coahuila are desert, taking under 250 millimetres a year and seeing very hot summer days. A semi-arid belt runs down the middle north, the central plateau around Aguascalientes and Zacatecas has steppe conditions, and the southern states of Chiapas and Oaxaca are tropical. Two further groups matter: the Bajio and the centre around Mexico City have a highland subtropical climate, while the Yucatan peninsula and the Chiapas coast are tropical with a wet summer.

Temperatures

Mexico City, at 2,240 metres, averages about 13 degrees in January and 16 degrees in July, with mild days and cold nights all year. Monterrey, at 540 metres, is far warmer in summer, with July means near 24 degrees and lows near 20, while its January mean is about 15 degrees. Mérida on the Yucatan sits near 26 degrees in both January and July, and desert cities in the north can pass 40 degrees in summer.

Rainfall

Almost all of the rain falls from June to September or October, when the summer monsoon and tropical disturbances draw moisture in from the Pacific and the Gulf; the north-west, including Baja California and Sonora, stays dry year round. Totals run from under 100 millimetres in the northern deserts to over 3,000 on the Pacific slopes of Chiapas.

When to go

For most of the country, November to April is the dry, mild season and the best time to travel, and the coast is cooler then as well. In the centre the summer rains usually clear by late September, and the months of May and June can be extremely hot. The Maya sites and beach resorts of the Yucatan are at their best in the winter months, when the trade winds keep the mosquitoes down.