Weather in Xi’an in December

A hard month. December is a hard month in Xi’an, and worth planning around. Highs sit at 8.2 °C and the day is short; this is an indoors-with-excursions month, not an outdoors-all-day one.

December ranks 10 of 12 — near the bottom of Xi’an's year. March is the month that works, and the swing between the two is 51 points, which is a different holiday rather than a slightly better one.

Rain falls on only 2 days, so an itinerary with no wet-weather fallback is a reasonable risk. Layers, and a genuinely waterproof outer — at 8.2 °C the difference between a good day and a miserable one is entirely down to what you are wearing.

What the averages hide

Averages flatten a month, and this one hides a few things: 24 nights drop below freezing, so anything left outside stays frozen. Across the twenty years measured, the hottest December day reached 19.5 °C and the coldest night fell to -12.3 °C.

December is dependably dry, and that reliability is the point: across the twenty years measured, the wettest December on record still only managed 17 mm, and the driest managed 0 mm. There is no meaningful variability to plan around, which makes this one of the few months anywhere that you can build a fixed outdoor itinerary against without a fallback. The wettest single day in twenty years of Decembers brought 7 mm. Rain simply is not the variable that decides this trip — heat, crowds and cost are.

Wind is light at 5 km/h, so the temperature on the page is close to the temperature on your skin, and humidity is unremarkable at 61%.

How December sits in the year

Temperatures hold steady either side: 15 °C in November, 8.2 here, 6.8 in January. Nothing about the timing within the month matters much.

Daylight in December

December sits at the dark end of Xi’an's year — 9.9 hours of daylight against 14.4 at midsummer, holding steady all month. Sightseeing days are genuinely shorter, and an itinerary built for summer will not fit.

An inland climate

With no coast nearby, the year swings a fair way — 37.4 °C between the warmest afternoons and the coldest nights, wider than any coastal city at this latitude would manage.

How busy it gets

Shoulder. The value months — prices ease off and you get the place closer to itself.

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

December in Xi’an versus nearby

If Xi’an is one option among several, the nearby comparison is worth making. Wuzhong is the weaker option in December — 6.4 °C cooler, 2 days less rain. Chongqing is a better bet in December — 4.7 °C warmer, 4 days more rain.

So: December is a compromise. March is 39 points better and is what Xi’an is actually like at its best — worth moving the trip for if that is possible, and worth adjusting expectations for if it is not.

Every month in Xi’an

See all twelve months in Xi’an, or where else to go in December.