Almost everyone arrives thinking Beijing is humid because it is in East Asia and has a monsoon. The numbers say otherwise: 586 millimetres of precipitation a year over 68 days, distributed so unevenly that the city works for eleven months like a dry place and for one like a tropical one.
01 A dry capital
To place the figure: 586 millimetres a year is less than Rome receives and of the same order as Madrid. And the winter months are extraordinarily dry: January totals 2.1 millimetres and December 2.5, practically nothing. The feeling of dryness on the street in winter is real and not an impression.
02 July and August, and the rest
The contrast is brutal and worth seeing in a row. May: 34.7 millimetres. June: 84.8. July: 209.5. August: 119.7. September: 53.3. That is, the curve rises on one side, makes a very sharp peak and falls on the other in barely four months, and the rest of the year stays flat and below 35 millimetres a month.
Added to that is the humidity, which is what makes those two months hard. In July and August average relative humidity is 72 and 73 %, against 41-43 % in winter and early spring. At 32 degrees with that humidity, an August day in Beijing costs far more than the thermometer suggests.
03 Winter is the other extreme
The other end of the year is the cold, and it is serious. January has an average high of 2.7 degrees and a low of −7.1; December, 4.0 and −5.2. The absolute record is −20.2 degrees. The annual range is enormous: between January's average low and July's average high there are almost forty degrees.
From an average low of −7.1 degrees in January to an average high of 32.0 in July. Almost forty degrees of range in the same city.
In exchange, winter has an argument almost nobody takes into account: it is bright. January totals 183 hours of sun and February 184, more than many central European summer months, and with humidity that low the air is visually clean. If you can take dry cold and dress for it, it is a visually magnificent season.
04 The two windows
There are two good seasons and they sit symmetrically around the rain peak. The spring one, April and May: highs of 21.3 and 27.6 degrees, 21.6 and 34.7 millimetres, and the year's highest sunshine figures, at 233 and 250 hours. The autumn one, September and October: highs of 26.8 and 19.5 degrees, with 53.3 and 27.8 millimetres.
Between the two there is a difference that is not in the table and is worth bearing in mind: spring in northern China is the season of dust episodes, and on some days visibility and air quality suffer badly. Autumn does not have that problem, and that is why, with very similar climate data, October beats April.
05 The verdict
October, and without much argument. It combines a high of 19.5 degrees, a low of 8.3, 27.8 millimetres over five days and 189 hours of sun, and adds the year's cleanest air and the colour of the tree cover, which in this city is plentiful. The second half of the month is better still than the first.
The month to avoid is July, for the combination of 209.5 millimetres, 72 % humidity and 32 degrees. And if your dates are fixed and fall in summer, the practical rule is simple: keep mornings for the street and the middle hours for indoors, because here the downpour arrives in the afternoon and the heat does not ease until nightfall.
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