Weather in Guangzhou in December

Prime time. If you get to pick your dates, December is the one. Highs average 21.5 °C, lows 9.5 °C, and rain falls on 5 days — nothing in the month is working against you.

December is the highest-scoring month of the twelve. The nearest rival is January, and the month at the other end of the year is August.

Rain falls on only 5 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. Across the twenty years measured, the hottest December day reached 30.9 °C and the coldest night fell to -3.3 °C, and the wettest single day dropped 46 mm — roughly 153% of the month's rain in one day.

This is the volatile part. December rainfall has ranged from 0 mm to 109 mm across the twenty years measured — a 109 mm spread around an average of 30 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 9.6 km/h, so the temperature on the page is close to the temperature on your skin, and humidity is unremarkable at 67%.

How December sits in the year

Temperatures hold steady either side: 26.3 °C in November, 21.5 here, 20.5 in January. Nothing about the timing within the month matters much.

Daylight in December

December sits at the dark end of Guangzhou's year — 10.7 hours of daylight against 13.5 at midsummer, holding steady all month. Sightseeing days are genuinely shorter, and an itinerary built for summer will not fit.

An inland climate

Despite being inland, the year stays fairly even: 23 °C between the year's warmest afternoons and coldest nights.

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 Guangzhou versus nearby

If Guangzhou is one option among several, the nearby comparison is worth making. Shenzhen is close enough to be a coin toss — within a degree on temperature, 1 day less rain. Haiphong is close enough to be a coin toss — within a degree on temperature, the same number of rain days.

So: December is the answer for Guangzhou. If it is booked out or priced out, January is the next best thing at 2 points behind, and August is the month to keep off the shortlist.

Every month in Guangzhou

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