Kos sää — kesäkuu

June is the month Bodrum regulars recommend over the peak, on the grounds that July and August are genuinely too hot for a lot of people. Their June figure is around 30C and not normally above it, which our row's 29.7C matches, reading as 32C. It is also the calmer end of the season: Turkish holidaymakers begin arriving as the schools break around mid-June, so the second half is busier than the first, but the town is not yet overrun. The one thing to temper is the sea. Our row puts it at 22.2C, which some early-June visitors describe as a bit cold even while the pools are fine. The record: 23C nights, 2 precipitation days carrying 10.2mm and 13.5 hours of sun.

Forum posters describe March in Kos as genuinely unpredictable but still mild overall, sitting outside the reliably hot, dry stretch that runs roughly June through early October. Posters note showers this time of year can affect one side of the island while leaving another completely dry, reflecting how localized spring weather patterns can be here. Posters consistently recommend packing layers and a light raincoat for a March visit, ready for both sunny stretches and passing rain within the same trip. Posters generally rate March as a mild, changeable shoulder-season month for Kos, well ahead of the settled summer heat but past the harshest of the Aegean winter.

September is the month Kos regulars call the best of the year — 25 to 30°C, the sea still at 27°C, everything open, and nowhere near July and August's crowds. Evenings want a cardigan. The thing to understand about the wind is that it is directional rather than seasonal: the meltemi is a northerly running June to about mid-September, so it hits the north coast hardest — Tigaki and Mastihari especially — and the forum's fix is simply to switch sides of the island, Kardamena being the usual suggestion. Kos reads breezy year-round on the monthly averages, but an average smooths over exactly the local, directional effect regulars are describing, so take the coast advice over the number. In the heat most people count it a cooling breeze rather than a problem.