Weather in Dubai in December

Prime time. December is about as good as Dubai gets. Highs average 25.4 °C, lows 20.2 °C, and rain falls on 2 days — nothing in the month is working against you.

December ranks 2 of 12 in Dubai. Only February scores clearly higher, and the difference is small enough to be settled by price rather than weather.

Rain falls on only 2 days, so an itinerary with no wet-weather fallback is a reasonable risk. Nothing specialised needed — this is the month you pack for the trip rather than for the weather.

What the averages hide

Averages flatten a month, and this one hides a few things: it never really gets hot: not one day in an average December reaches 30 °C; the day barely swings — 5.3 °C between the overnight low and the afternoon high. Across the twenty years measured, the hottest December day reached 31.3 °C and the coldest night fell to 15.2 °C, and the wettest single day dropped 44 mm — roughly 314% of the month's rain in one day.

This is the volatile part. December rainfall has ranged from 0 mm to 68 mm across the twenty years measured — a 68 mm spread around an average of 14 mm. The average is real but almost no individual December looks like it, so treat the figure as the middle of a wide range rather than a forecast.

Wind is light at 10.9 km/h, so the temperature on the page is close to the temperature on your skin, and humidity is unremarkable at 62%.

How December sits in the year

The month is on the way down: 4.3 °C cooler than November, with January dropping another 2.3 °C. The first week and the last are not the same trip.

Daylight in December

December sits at the dark end of Dubai's year — 10.6 hours of daylight against 13.7 at midsummer, holding steady all month. Sightseeing days are genuinely shorter, and an itinerary built for summer will not fit.

Sea temperature

The sea sits at about 25.6 °C in December — warm enough to stay in as long as you like. The sea peaks at 33.7 °C in August and bottoms out at 21.9 °C — water lags the air by a month or two, which is why the best swimming often comes after the best weather.

How busy it gets

Peak season. Expect the highest prices of the year and to be booking well ahead.

Crowd levels are estimated from climate desirability and school-holiday calendars, not from visitor numbers.

December in Dubai versus nearby

If Dubai is one option among several, the nearby comparison is worth making. Al Ain City is close enough to be a coin toss — within a degree on temperature, 1 day less rain. Rājkot is close enough to be a coin toss — 4.1 °C warmer, 2 days less rain.

So: December is effectively as good as it gets here — 1 points behind February, which is inside the margin where the weather stops being the deciding factor and price starts being it.

Every month in Dubai

See all twelve months in Dubai, or where else to go in December.