The Red Sea Calendar: For Six Months of the Year, the Sea in Hurghada Is Warmer Than the Air

Hurghada's sea never drops below 22.3°C, so swimming is possible in every month of the year. From October to March the water is warmer than the air above it, reaching a 6.5°C gap in January. The best combination of warm water and bearable air falls in October and November.

Where these numbers come from, and why they disagree

Every Hurghada calendar on the internet publishes a sea temperature. Almost none of them says where it came from, and they do not agree with each other.

Some sources put the coldest month in February at 21°C. Others put it in March at 22.2°C. One reports a winter average of 23.4°C. The figures in this article come from Climate-Data.org's 1991 to 2021 normals throughout, because that set is dated, covers a stated 30-year period and publishes both air and water in the same table. Where you see a number here, it is from that source and no other. We have not blended sources to smooth the edges.

The spread between published sets is roughly one to two degrees. That matters less than it sounds for planning a trip, and more than it sounds if you are reading a page that states a single figure as fact without telling you which reading it used.

The sea holds summer long after the air lets go

The Red Sea is a large body of water in a desert, and water changes temperature far more slowly than air does. The consequence runs through the whole calendar.

Air temperature peaks at 31.2°C in August and collapses through autumn, down to 22°C by November and 16.7°C by January. The sea peaks at 28.9°C in the same month and takes until March to bottom out at 22.5°C, seven months later.

That lag produces the single most useful fact about the Red Sea for anyone planning a trip. In October the sea averages 27.5°C against air at 26.1°C. In November it is 26.3°C water against 22°C air. By January the water is 23.2°C and the air is 16.7°C, a gap of six and a half degrees.

Averaged across the whole year the sea runs at 25.5°C and the air at 24.4°C. In Hurghada, the water is the warmer half of the holiday.

Which months can you actually swim in?

All of them. That is not marketing, it is what the numbers say: the coldest monthly average water temperature in the year is 22.5°C in March, and the lowest recorded monthly minimum is 22.3°C.

Comfort is a different question from possibility. Most people swim without thinking about it above roughly 26°C, which covers June through November. Between December and May the water is swimmable but noticeably cool on entry, and divers doing repeat dives will want a wetsuit.

The wind matters more than the tables suggest. Getting out of 23°C water into 17°C January air on an open boat deck is a different experience from the same swim in October, and no temperature table captures it.

What each month is actually like

Rain, sun and humidity

Rain is close to a non-issue. The station records about 6 mm across an entire year, and the wettest month, October, averages 2 mm. There is no month with a measurable count of rainy days.

Sunshine runs from 9.3 hours a day in December to 12.4 in June, totalling around 3,980 hours a year. Even the darkest month gives more daily sun than a British summer.

Humidity is lowest in June at 38% and highest in November and December at 51%. That is a narrow band, and it means the heat in July and August is dry heat rather than the heavy kind, which is why 31°C in Hurghada is more bearable than 31°C on the Mediterranean coast.

The one thing the tables will not tell you

Wind. Hurghada sits on a coast that funnels a persistent northerly through most of the year, which is why it became a windsurfing and kitesurfing destination rather than only a diving one.

That wind is the reason two months with similar water temperatures can feel entirely different. It suppresses the apparent air temperature, it decides whether the boats go out to the offshore reefs, and it turns a 23°C winter swim into something you want a towel ready for. Climate normals for temperature are stable and reliable. Wind on any given week is not, and no monthly average will help you plan around it.

The practical version: in December through February, book somewhere with a sheltered beach or a heated pool as a fallback. From September through November you are unlikely to need one.

What we are not telling you: what a room costs

The obvious companion to a climate calendar is a rate calendar. We are not publishing one, and the reason is worth stating.

Twenty of the hotels listed with us are in Hurghada. Eleven of them have loaded a single priced date onto their availability calendar. From September onward, every priced night in our data comes from five properties, and each of those five carries one flat rate for the entire year.

So we could produce a twelve-month rate curve. It would be five hotels' annual defaults repeated thirteen times, and it would look convincingly like seasonality. That is the difference between having data and having evidence, and we would rather say so than publish a chart that flatters us.

The honest version of that finding is about supply, not price: most independent Hurghada hotels are not yet pricing by season at all. When enough are, we will publish the curve and say what changed.

In the meantime, if you are choosing dates, our hotel listings show live rates for the nights you actually enter. See hotels in Hurghada.

Questions travellers ask

The As-home team · Published 9 August 2026 · Last updated 9 August 2026