İstanköy hava durumu: Nisan

April is the quiet end of the Ephesus year - November through April sees relatively few visitors - and the cruise season only starts around the middle of the month, so in April a handful of ships call at Kusadasi rather than the fleet that arrives in summer. Regulars say the site can be seen properly then, which June to September does not allow. The timing advice still holds: the coaches from the ships reach Ephesus from about half past ten, so an early start is the whole trick, and by late April the sun is already strong enough to make that worth doing on its own account. The record for Selcuk: 22.2C days that feel like 21C, 11.4C nights, 5.8 precipitation days carrying 44.1mm and 11.3 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.