Best Time To Visit Alexandria

September is the best beach month of the year, not August. The sea is at twenty-six, level with August's peak, while the air has eased slightly.

Rain is still effectively nil. That pairing of warm water and easing heat does not repeat anywhere else in the calendar.

June to August is dry, and this is where Alexandria is unlike the rest of Egypt. August tops out at about thirty-one degrees, against thirty-seven and a half in Hurghada and Sharm El Sheikh.

Alexandria is the right Egyptian destination for a July or August trip. No rain at all, a sea at twenty-five to twenty-six, and six and a half degrees cooler than the Red Sea coast.

April warms to about twenty-four degrees and is nearly dry, though the sea is still only eighteen.

April is when the khamsin usually arrives. This hot, dusty spring wind can lift the temperature by as much as twenty degrees in two hours and carry sand at up to a hundred and forty kilometres an hour, but it rarely comes more than once a week and lasts only a few hours, so keep one flexible day.

November and December are where the rain comes back, and this is the only part of Egypt where winter rain actually disrupts a trip.

Early November is a reasonable last call, with the sea still at twenty-two. The Alexandria International Film Festival falls in autumn, recent editions in October or November, though the month has shifted over the years so confirm it.

January is the wettest month of the year, and Alexandria is one of the two wettest places in Egypt, alongside Rafah. Its January alone takes more than eight times Hurghada's entire year.

Expect storms rather than showers. The cooler months bring violent storms and occasionally sleet and hail, and February and March have the coldest sea of any Egyptian destination at about seventeen degrees.

A Cairo, Luxor and Aswan trip is a winter trip, because inland Egypt is unbearable in summer. Alexandria is the opposite: its best months are spring, summer and autumn.

So its worst month is the peak month for the rest of the country. Anyone bolting Alexandria onto a January Nile itinerary hits its wettest, coldest weeks and a seventeen-degree sea. Plan it as its own trip, or attach it to an April or October Nile run instead.