Guide · · 6 min read
A month-by-month weather guide to celebrating in Mexico
When each of our seven destinations is at its best, when to avoid it, and the months where a good plan makes all the difference.
Grace Whitfield · Senior Planner
Mexico is a big country with three coasts, a high central plateau and a tropical south. “Is the weather good in March” has a different answer in every one of our destinations. Here’s the calendar we work from.
The short version
| Destination | Best | Good with planning | Avoid |
|---|---|---|---|
| Los Cabos | Oct – May | Jun | Jul – Sep |
| Tulum & Riviera Maya | Dec – Apr | Nov, May | Jun – Oct |
| San Miguel de Allende | Oct – Apr | May, Sep | Jun – Aug (rain) |
| Oaxaca | Oct – May | Jun – Sep (evenings) | Late Oct (Día de Muertos capacity) |
| Yucatán haciendas | Nov – Mar | Apr, Oct | May – Sep (heat) |
| Puerto Vallarta & Punta Mita | Nov – May | Jun, Oct | Jul – Sep |
| Mexico City | Oct – May | Jun – Sep (afternoon rain) | None outright |
Month by month
January – February. Peak season everywhere and rightly so: cool, dry, clear. Whales in Cabo and Vallarta. San Miguel and Oaxaca need heaters and wraps in the evening.
March – April. Still excellent on every coast. Spring break brings crowds to Cabo and Cancún in March; we book venues away from the party zones. Semana Santa (Holy Week) fills domestic hotels in the highlands.
May. Hot on the Yucatán, warming in Tulum with the first seaweed. Beautiful in Cabo and Vallarta. Rain begins in the highlands late in the month.
June – August. Rainy season in the centre and south: dramatic afternoon storms in San Miguel, Oaxaca and Mexico City that clear by evening. Hurricane season begins on both coasts. Cabo stays dry until August but hot. We plan very few coastal celebrations in these months.
September. The riskiest month for both coasts and the wettest inland. We don’t recommend it.
October. The turn. Cabo and Vallarta dry out mid-month; Tulum’s seaweed usually clears. San Miguel and Oaxaca are green and gorgeous after the rains, with Día de Muertos at the end of the month filling every room in Oaxaca.
November – December. Back to perfect. Early November is our favourite month in the whole country: cool, clear, not yet peak-priced.
How we plan around it
Every outdoor ceremony has a rain plan that we’d be happy to use, not a tent in a parking lot. We watch wind, not just rain, in Cabo. We never schedule a Yucatán ceremony before the last hour of light. And we keep a real relationship with a meteorologist in Mexico City who calls us, not the other way around.
