The Wadi Hadramawt is hot and dry year-round, but the high season for visitors has always been the cooler months between October and March. Daytime temperatures sit between 25 and 30°C, mornings and evenings are pleasant, and the desert light is at its softest. This is also the date harvest in late summer to early autumn, when the palm groves around the city are at their most active.
From May to August the heat is severe, regularly exceeding 40°C, and the air over the wadi shimmers. Flash floods occasionally sweep down the wadi after rare cloudbursts in the highlands — dramatic to watch from above, dangerous on the valley floor. Foreign visitors who came in the pre-war years almost always timed their trip for the cool months.