Weather and Climate in Luxor
On this page you will find Luxor’s live conditions — temperature, feels-like, wind, UV and air quality — with an hourly outlook and a seven-day forecast. The guide below explains the city’s remarkable climate through the year, with particular attention to the fierce summer heat and the near-perfect winter weather that draws visitors to the Valley of the Kings.
Luxor has a hot desert climate (Köppen BWh) of the hyper-arid kind. Rain is almost a theoretical concept here — the city averages only a few millimetres a year, and many years see none at all. Sunshine is near-constant, and cloud is a rarity outside the odd winter day.
Far from any sea, Luxor is governed entirely by the desert and the thin green thread of the Nile. That means intense, dry heat in summer and a very large day-to-night temperature range year-round. Typical highs climb to around 41 °C in July — with heatwaves pushing well into the mid-forties — and ease to about 23 °C in January, while clear winter nights can turn surprisingly cold.
The combination of extreme heat, strong UV and very low humidity shapes daily life and tourism alike: summer sightseeing is an early-morning affair, while the warm, dry winter is the high season. The dashboard above pairs UV and feels-like with temperature so you can gauge conditions on the exposed temple sites and the open west bank.
Summer
Summer in Luxor is genuinely extreme. From June through September, daytime highs sit in the low forties and regularly push higher during heatwaves, under a cloudless sky and a punishing sun. The saving grace is the bone-dry air, which makes the heat more tolerable than humid regions and allows the nights to cool sharply once the sun sets. Even so, midday on the open temple sites is intense, and visitors and residents alike confine activity to the early morning and the evening.
Winter
Winter is Luxor at its finest — the reason the city fills with travellers from November to March. Days are warm and reliably sunny, with highs in the low twenties perfect for exploring the temples and tombs, while the dry desert air lets clear nights turn genuinely cold, occasionally near single digits. Rain is so rare that a shower is a local talking point. It is, for many, the ideal sightseeing climate anywhere in Egypt.
Spring & Autumn
Spring warms quickly and brings the Khamsin, when hot desert winds raise dust and push temperatures toward summer levels well before the season is out. Autumn is the kinder transition, with the ferocious summer heat fading through October into the warm, dry, settled conditions that signal the start of the comfortable season.
Rain Probability
Rain in Luxor is close to non-existent. The city sits in one of the driest belts on Earth, and what little falls comes as the rarest of winter showers — so unusual that a wet day is a genuine event. The hourly and seven-day panels above show the live chance of rain, which here will read zero on almost every day of the year.
On the very rare occasion a shower does reach Upper Egypt, it can fall as a brief, sharp burst, and because the ground and infrastructure are built for a rainless climate, even a little water makes an outsized impression. For practical planning, though, rain is essentially never a factor in Luxor — heat and sun are what you prepare for.
Wind and Humidity
Wind in Luxor mostly means dust. For much of the year a light northerly breeze tracks down the Nile, but in spring the hot Khamsin can blow up from the south, raising sand and hazing the sky over the temples and the Theban hills. The live wind speed, gusts and direction in the dashboard above are worth checking when a dusty day is forecast.
Humidity is very low — among the lowest of any inhabited place in Egypt — which is precisely why the extreme summer heat remains survivable. The dry air keeps the feels-like temperature close to the actual reading, though the fierce sun can lift it on exposed sites, and a clear winter night can feel colder than the thermometer suggests once the wind picks up. The dashboard tracks feels-like, dew point and gusts alongside the headline figure.
Planning around the weather
Luxor’s weather plans itself around the sun. In summer, sightseeing belongs to the first hours after dawn and the late afternoon; midday is for shade and rest, and water, a hat and sun protection are essential. The exposed temples and the treeless west bank offer little relief, so the heat must be taken seriously even by the fit.
The winter high season needs little more than warm daytime clothing and a layer for cold desert nights, and it offers some of the most reliable sightseeing weather on Earth. Whatever the season, the live conditions and seven-day forecast on this page refresh automatically, giving you a current view of Luxor before you travel or set out for the tombs and temples.