The best time to visit Mexico

What a year in Mexico looks like

The Mexican year splits into a dry season from roughly November to April and a wet season from about June to October, but wet here usually means a hard late-afternoon thunderstorm that passes rather than the all-day drizzle of an Asian monsoon. Mexico City and San Miguel sit high enough that they stay mild all year and get genuinely cold on winter nights, while the Riviera Maya barely changes temperature at all. Both coasts fall inside a hurricane season that normally runs June to November and is busiest around September. Layered on top of the weather is a natural calendar of its own: grey whales in Baja, monarch butterflies in Michoacán, and sea turtles on both coastlines.

The year, in windows

• December to February — The steadiest part of the dry season and high season on the coasts: clear skies, low humidity, calm Caribbean water. It is also the only window when grey whales are inside the Baja California lagoons and the monarch butterflies are massed on the Michoacán mountainsides. Highland nights get cold enough for a real jacket, which surprises people who packed only for a beach. Christmas through New Year is when coastal rooms are hardest to get.
• March to May — The late dry season, getting hotter week by week, with May usually the hottest month in the Yucatán and Oaxaca. The upside is that Chichén Itzá, Palenque and the rest are bone dry and easy to walk. Easter week is a major domestic holiday that moves between March and April from year to year, so check that year's calendar before booking anything on the coast. Sargassum seaweed on the Caribbean beaches typically begins arriving in these months and varies a great deal from year to year.
• June to August — The rains have started but in their gentlest form: a storm in the late afternoon or evening, then done, with most mornings still sunny. The landscape greens up visibly and the southern waterfalls run at their fullest. Coastal rates come down off the winter peak. This is also when whale sharks gather off Cancún and Isla Mujeres, which is a season you cannot buy at any other time of year. The hurricane count has begun but most years it stays quiet until the end of this window.
• September to October — The wettest weeks and the peak of the hurricane season on both coastlines. Some beachfront hotels use it for refurbishment, prices are at their lowest of the year, and the trade is a real chance that a week of plans has to move. Inland, though, these are beautiful months: the highlands are green and the air is cool. By late October the preparations for Day of the Dead, held in the first days of November, are visible everywhere in Oaxaca and Michoacán.
• November — The transition month a lot of people overlook: the rain has finished but the landscape is still green from it, the air has dried out and cooled, and the hurricane season closes at the end of the month. Prices do not climb fully until mid-December. Day of the Dead in the opening days of November makes Oaxaca and Pátzcuaro exceptionally busy, so those two need booking well ahead even though the rest of the country is quiet.

The weeks to aim for

For a mixed itinerary the sweet spots are November into early December, and again March: the rain is done, humidity is low, and you are outside the most expensive fortnight of the year. If the trip has one specific target, follow the natural calendar instead — grey whales in Baja are a January to March event, the monarch butterflies roughly November to March, and the whale sharks off Cancún fall inside the wet season from about June to September. For Mexico City on its own, almost any month works, because the highlands change the least of anywhere in the country.

The weeks to avoid

September is the hardest month to justify on either coast, because the heaviest rain and the busiest part of the hurricane season land together. The prices are genuinely low, but the trade is boats that cannot sail on some days and an itinerary that may need to move. Anyone going to the Yucatán in May should be ready for midday heat that makes walking a ruin at noon close to impossible; arrive when the gates open instead. Easter week and the New Year period are major domestic holidays, so beaches and rooms are far fuller and dearer than the calendar alone suggests.

What the season does to a data plan

Mexico runs on a phone more than visitors expect, because ride-hailing is the default way around the big cities and every booking and driver check needs you online. In the wet season an afternoon storm regularly rewrites the day, and people end up in a cafe or back at the hotel using data to find something indoors, which consumes more than a dry day would. Jungle sites such as Palenque and Calakmul often have thin service or none, so download maps and tickets first. During hurricane season on the Caribbean coast the airline app and the state notices are what you must be able to open at any hour, and hotel Wi-Fi tends to go down with the power, which is exactly when your own data line earns its keep.