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Temperature

Everyone thinks Egypt -- and then thinks HOT. It is hot in Egypt, but not as hot as you might think during the winter. February is actually quite comfortable, which temps in the eighties or so. The nights get pretty cool, and there were a few times I was thankful for a light sweater.

However, visit in the summer and be prepared to roast. The high temp is "officially" 45ºC in Luxor, but again, we were told that it gets much hotter -- up to 65ºC -- our felucca captain explained that the news will always report the temperature lower than it really is, so that people will go to work. If it is hotter, they will not go to work and nothing gets done. When I asked if they didn't have their own thermometers, he told me that only a few people had them and they tended to believe the radio, anyway.

High temps:

The highest official recorded temperature in Cairo is 113°F, in June. The lowest was 32°F. In Luxor, it reached a scorching 50°C/122°F one day in May. According to the charts I can find, no rain falls in Luxor. We actually got rained on in Tanis, and everyone told us that it was a rare occurrence.

Alexandria, of course, is on the Med, and the weather there is much cooler and prone to wind and rain. It poured on us in Alex, with a thunderstorm that rattled the carefully fitted shutters on our hotel room window.

It gets really hot in the valleys in Luxor -- even in February the sun beats down on the rocks all day and the Valley of the Kings and Queens got really warm. The canyon with Hatshepsut's temple, Deir el-Bahari, is an oven in the afternoon. Our guide told us that in the summer, the stones are hot enough to melt rubber-soled tennis shoes.

I expected it to be cooler inside the tombs, as we climbed down into the "cave" of each tomb. Not noticeably. The extra humidity just made it muggy and even warmer in some cases. I think part of the issue was air being pumped in to keep everyone from asphyxiating -- it was hot, desert air. Only in the pyramids, down into the bedrock, was it cool.

In the mornings, Cairo is a balmy 70% relative humidity. This drops dramatically in the afternoons, but it is still more humid in Cairo than it is in Colorado. I was surprised. Cairo gets downright humid during the day -- the Nile valley is green and wet.

Bring a hat, and drink plenty of water. And wear long sleeves. The sun, even in winter, is deceptively fierce. While I haven't been able to convince the Adorable Husband to wear sunscreen, I still burned even with it on.