1. Riyadh — Saudi Arabia
Score 100.0Day27.7 °CNight15.1 °CRainy days5
Where to go in March
March is the month when the Arabian peninsula peaks before it burns. Riyadh takes a perfect score at 27.7 °C, Wadi Rum at 27.3 °C, Muscat and Doha alongside them — and by June Riyadh reads 43.5 °C and drops out of every list. Egypt is at its best too, Cairo at 24.5 °C and Sharm El Sheikh at 26.6 °C. Ten of the twelve entries touch the ceiling, which is the recurring flaw of a comfort score: once the weather stops being an obstacle, it separates nothing. Look at the columns underneath instead. Cairo and Sharm El Sheikh share an index of 183, Doha's is 672. Jerusalem and Marrakesh close the table just below the ceiling, both on five days above 1 mm. Southern Europe can already be walked but not swum, and outside Easter its hotels are still on winter rates.
The ranking for March
2. Sal — Cape Verde
Score 100.0Day25.7 °CNight19.5 °CRainy days0
3. Sharm El Sheikh — Egypt
Score 100.0Day26.6 °CNight18.2 °CRainy days0
Three of them in detail
Cairo — Egypt
Cairo gives 24.5 °C in the afternoon, 15.1 °C at first light and one day above 1 mm — March is oddly its wettest month, within a year totalling 16.7 mm. Enough to walk Giza and the museum properly. Index 183, the least expensive base here, with the airport 16 km out.
Wadi Rum — Jordan
Wadi Rum offers 27.3 °C during the day but 15.2 °C at night, and the gap widens further once the sun is down. One day of rain, 13.5 mm, in a desert that registers only 30.4 mm a year. Aqaba's airport lies 25 km away, so the transfer stays short.
Riyadh — Saudi Arabia
Riyadh scores 100 at 27.7 °C, with nights at 15.1 °C and five days above 1 mm — five of the eighteen its whole year records. The window is narrow: in June the same city posts 43.5 °C and vanishes from the rankings. Its airport sits 27 km from the centre.
What to avoid this month
The north no longer holds the list alone: four European entries and one tropical. Reykjavik takes 15 rainy days for 138 mm, Edinburgh counts 15 too and Hallstatt 15 for 120.5 mm, while Bled barely reaches 3.1 °C. Nosy Be is the outsider, 26 days of rain and 355.3 mm.
How the score is calculated
One formula, applied identically to the hundred places, on measured station records:
score = 100 − 3·max(0, |tMax − 25| − 3) − 4·max(0, rainyDays1 − 6) − 2·max(0, 12 − tMin)A place is flagged as one to avoid when it records 14 rainy days or more in the month, an average high of 34 °C or more, or an average high of 8 °C or less. Only the five lowest-scoring flagged places are listed.
Updated on 21 September 2026