Погода: Москва, апрель

Regulars are direct that nothing is certain this month - one traveller's own account describes a pleasant, t-shirt-worthy 24C one day followed immediately by an icy 8C with wind and rain the next. Our row backs the average sitting between those extremes, 17.3C over 8.8C nights, with 43.2mm of rain across 8.2 days. Regulars are split on recent trends, some calling it warm and largely rain-free lately, others still expecting real rain as a baseline assumption - the honest advice from most is to plan for anything and dress in real layers rather than trust either extreme. Late August into early September is specifically recommended as schools return and the heaviest tourist crowds thin out. The record: humidity 73 percent, 7.5 hours of sun, a 17.6 kph wind and AQI 59.

May here splits on a date. The 1st to the 9th is a holiday stretch ending in Victory Day: traffic and business go quiet and rooms can be cheaper, while parades fill the centre and restaurants and hotels are packed. The second half is the quieter half, with the trees out and the visitor numbers still low. Our row gives 17.7C by day reading as 16C, 7.2C nights that feel like 4C, and 0.8cm still sitting in the snow column as the tail of winter. Rain is 61.2mm across 11.3 days. The compensation is light, 16.3 hours of it. The lilacs come at the very end of the month and into June. The record: humidity 65 percent, 11.3 hours of sun and AQI 58.

Asked whether this city has white nights, regulars give the careful answer: not the real thing, which belongs to St Petersburg three hundred miles north, but nautical twilight all night - the horizon stays visible and it never goes properly dark. Their figures for the longest day are sunrise at 04:45 and sunset at 22:18, and our daylight column agrees at 17.5 hours. The weather underneath it is mild rather than warm, 22.6C by day and 12.4C at night, with 72mm of rain across 11.5 days, so showers on a third of them. Evenings have become warm by June in a way May's are not. The record: humidity 67 percent, 12.2 hours of sun and AQI 59.

August in Moscow is the part of the year that feels warmest, because the humidity is higher than in July and there are few days when you want an added layer. The forum attaches two qualifications. Rain is a very good chance rather than a possibility - our row carries 10.3 precipitation days - and there is the turn: in the second half of the month you can feel autumn arriving, a little colder each day, with early mornings, late evenings and the hour after a shower the parts that bite. A windbreaker rather than a winter jacket is the standing answer. On crowds, regulars give 15 July to 20 August as the quiet window, after which the city comes back and the last week is heaving. The record: 23.5C days, 13.6C nights, 60.2mm of rain and 10.9 hours of sun.