When Can I Be Outside?

Hour-by-hour windows for outdoor time this week, on the National Weather Service's heat-index scale — Cairo's defining hazard, in plain words.

About these tools

Cairo's defining hazard isn't rain — it gets about 33mm a year — it's heat. Here's when the next three days are easiest to be outside, hour by hour.

Heat

This page tracks heat only — no air-quality feed reaches this area reliably enough to publish a number, so air is never part of the windows or the readings below.

Today, Monday 24 August

Best windows today: 7–8 am.

As of 24 August at 5:46. Modelled forecast for the area around central Cairo, refreshed about every half hour.

Hour by hour today

5–7 amMostly fineFeels like up to 27°C (NWS Caution).
7–8 amComfortableNothing flagged on either scale.
8–11 amMostly fineFeels like up to 31°C (NWS Caution).
11 am–10 pmHarder goingFeels like up to 39°C (NWS Extreme Caution).

UV peaks near 7 today. On the EPA’s UV index scale, 1–2 is low; 8 and above is very high to extreme and calls for extra sun protection.

The next two days

Day	Best windows	Peak feels-like
Tuesday 25 August	No comfortable window	39°C
Wednesday 26 August	No comfortable window	42°C

Guidance, not a medical call

Heat lands differently person to person — age, pregnancy, some medications, working outdoors, and conditions like asthma all change the math. This page only ever says easier or harder, never “safe.” For health guidance see the official heat-safety pages, and for official readings use the channels listed below.

How this page decides

Heat uses the National Weather Service’s heat-index categories, applied to the modelled feels-like temperature: Caution 27°C–32°C, Extreme Caution 32°C–39°C, Danger 39°C–51°C, Extreme Danger 52°C and up.

Each hour is banded on the heat-index scale alone — this town has no air-quality feed reaching it, so air isn’t part of this page. A “best window” means hours where the feels-like temperature stays below 27°C (below the NWS Caution band). No thresholds on this page are ours.

Reading it for your plans

Kids' outdoor practice

August afternoons average a 38°C high with khamsin dust common in spring — morning and evening are the reliable windows for anything active outdoors most of the year.

Outdoor and construction work

Midday heat is the steady constraint here, not a rare event — Cairo runs hot from May through September, so the comfortable-window strip below is worth checking before scheduling heavy outdoor work.

Worth knowing

No usable local air-quality feed

Every route to a real Cairo AQI reading is currently blocked or unavailable: Egypt's official EEAA monitors aren't machine-readable from here, OpenAQ and WAQI need keys this platform doesn't hold, and community sensor networks report nothing within range. This page tracks heat only until one opens up.

Hot for most of the year

Cairo's ERA5 climate normals (2015–2024) put the August mean high at 38°C and the mean low at 23.7°C — nights don't offer much relief either, which is why the windows below matter more here than the daily high alone.

The official channels

Egyptian Meteorological AuthorityThe national forecasting authority's own site.

Fetched 24 August at 5:46. These are modelled estimates for the area around central Cairo, not measurements — a shadeless trail at 3 pm runs hotter than the area-wide number. Weather data by Open-Meteo (CC BY 4.0). Heat categories from the National Weather Service.