Weekly note
Basel
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Photo by Matti Blume, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

Basel in December

avoid busy · not the best time to go

The year in Basel

Tap a month for its page

  1. Basel in January: avoid
  2. Basel in February: ok
  3. Basel in March: ok
  4. Basel in April: sweet spot
  5. Basel in May: sweet spot
  6. Basel in June: sweet spot
  7. Basel in July: sweet spot, busy
  8. Basel in August: sweet spot, busy
  9. Basel in September: sweet spot
  10. Basel in October: good
  11. Basel in November: avoid
  12. Basel in December: avoid, busy
  • Sweet spot
  • Good
  • OK
  • Avoid
  • Busy
December at Basel is 7°C by day and 1°C at night, with 12 rainy days and about 4 hours of sun a day. Busier than usual.

The numbers

Daily high7°C
Nightly low1°C
Feels like, afternoon4°C
Rainy days, 1 mm or more12 · 97 mm
Humidity84%
Sunshine3.8 h/day
Daylight8.5 h/day
Crowds45 / 100, higher is quieter

Ten-year averages for this calendar month. A rainy day is one with at least 1 mm of rain, as a weather station counts it. The model these figures come from drizzles more than a rain gauge, the more so the warmer the month, so its days count from 2 mm, rising to 5 mm in the hottest.

Weather read at the Old Town, 7 km from the airport (BSL): ten years of ERA5 and ERA5-Land reanalysis, through Open-Meteo's open data.

How busy it gets

December: busy. Busiest in July, August and December; quietest in February, April and May.

Public holidays in December

Holidays crowd a place out and push fares up around them; they count toward the crowd score above.

Basel in pictures

What to pack

  • A proper coat, hat and gloves: nights average 1°C.
  • Rain gear you will actually use: about 12 rainy days and 97 mm.
  • Humidity averages 84%; breathable fabrics dry faster.

Each line is a threshold over the ten-year figures above, not advice from anywhere else.

Before you go

Type C plugs at 230 V. Drives on the right. The currency is the Swiss franc. No UK Foreign Office advice against travel. Everything for Switzerland: cost of living, languages, emergency numbers and health.

On arrival in Basel: the apps, paying, getting around, tipping and the emergency numbers.

December elsewhere

In December from

The other months at Basel

← November · All twelve months at Basel · January →

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