Været i Yazd i desember

December is low season here and the boards treat that as a reason to come - easier to arrange, quieter sites - with one warning attached every time. The days are mild; the nights in the desert are cold and dry. Regulars put the daytime around 8 or 9C, cooler than our column's 17.1C reading as 14C, which is probably a remembered cold week against a monthly average; on the nights they and the column agree, 3C here reading as 0C. Pack properly warm clothes rather than a jacket. The dryness is the constant at 43 percent humidity and a dew point below freezing, with 11mm of rain across 2.2 days and 1.8cm in the snow column. The badgirs that cool the old houses all summer are just architecture now. The record: 8.6 hours of sun and AQI 50.

Regulars are specific daytime temperatures here commonly land around 8 to 9C some years, considerably colder after dark, part of a broader Iranian winter that can bring rain or snow to much of the country this month. Our row backs that cold, genuinely dry read, 15.9C over 1.8C nights feeling as low as -2C, with rain light at 11.2mm across 2.9 days and a trace of early snow, 3.6cm. Regulars are consistent Yazd remains genuinely worth the cold for its cultural and historical sites, commonly combined with Tehran, Isfahan and Shiraz on one hassle-free winter route. Layers for a genuinely wide day-to-night temperature swing remain the standard advice throughout. The record: humidity 42 percent, 8.9 hours of sun and a 9.3 kph wind.

Regulars asked how cold February gets here answer in two parts. The days are manageable and the nights are not - being desert, the cold comes back hard after dark, and the advice is proper winter clothing, hat and gloves included. Snow and fog are not the problem they are further north, though the wind can be. The figure they give, 8 to 9C, is below our 18.6C average high but close to our daily mean of 11.6C, so they are likely describing the whole day rather than its best hour. Our nights read 4.5C and feel like 1C at 37 percent humidity. The record: 13.8mm across 3.2 days, 2.3cm of snow, 9.6 hours of sun and AQI 45.

Regulars call November in Iran's southern and eastern cities nice and cool and quote 28 or 29C; our Yazd row says 21.3C, so read theirs as the warm end or the early weeks and ours as the month averaged at altitude. Where they and our figures agree exactly is after dark: the desert turns cold and dry once the sun goes, and our 7.7C night reads as 4C - jacket weather, in a city people picture only as hot. Rain is 11.9mm across 2.7 days, with 0.9cm of snow in the row that belongs to the high ground. The architectural answer to all this is the badgir, the wind tower, which cools a room through the hot months with no machinery at all. The record: humidity 40 percent, 9.1 hours of sun, a 7.8 kph wind and AQI 52.

March in Iran is spring-like rather than warm, and for most of the month it is technically still winter - the forum warns that the higher deserts and mountains can still fall below freezing after dark, though Yazd's own nights read a mild 10C. What actually shapes a March trip is Nowruz. The new year falls on 21 March, the holidays run from about the 16th to 3 April, and the crowded core is roughly the 20th to the 26th. Yazd is named alongside Isfahan and Shiraz as the cities that fill, so hotels, intercity transport and guides want firm bookings, and prices step up after 15 March. Regulars still recommend going then, for how much contact you get with Iranian families on holiday. The record: 24C days that feel like 21C, 10C nights, humidity 30 percent, 2.8 precipitation days and 10.4 hours of sun.