Every other climate guide on Verus is, in one way or another, about heat — Jamaica, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Australia's northern half. Weihai is the first genuine exception: a coastal city on the Shandong peninsula, at roughly the same latitude as Los Angeles or Seoul, that gets a real winter. January mornings sit below freezing. That single fact changes what a running guide to this city actually needs to cover.
This guide uses Verus's own climate archive — eleven years (2015-2025) of Open-Meteo records for Weihai, sampled at 6am local time, the hour most organised racing here actually starts or people actually train.
Eleven years of Weihai mornings, month by month
| Month | High / low °C | Rain days | 6am temp / dew point | Mornings ≥24°C at 6am |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| January | 2.5 / -2.3 | 4 | -1.1° / -6.0° | 0% |
| February | 3.8 / -1.8 | 4.1 | -0.8° / -5.7° | 0% |
| March | 9.7 / 2.5 | 3 | 3.5° / -1.2° | 0% |
| April | 15.3 / 8.0 | 4.5 | 9.0° / 4.1° | 0% |
| May | 21.3 / 13.6 | 6.5 | 15.0° / 10.1° | 0% |
| June | 25.8 / 18.7 | 6.3 | 19.9° / 16.8° | 0% |
| July | 28.3 / 22.9 | 9.1 | 23.8° / 22.2° | 35% |
| August | 28.4 / 23.8 | 13.2 | 24.5° / 22.5° | 52% |
| September | 24.7 / 19.7 | 6.6 | 20.5° / 17.3° | 1% |
| October | 18.6 / 13.4 | 6.2 | 14.3° / 9.2° | 0% |
| November | 12.3 / 6.7 | 6 | 8.1° / 3.1° | 0% |
| December | 5.0 / 0.1 | 6.2 | 1.4° / -3.7° | 0% |
Read that August column literally: in more than half of the mornings in an eleven-year archive, the air was already 24°C or warmer before sunrise. That's not a hot afternoon — that's the starting line. Every other month of the year, that figure is at or near zero.
Why August feels harder than the thermometer suggests
Air temperature alone understates what August actually feels like here, because it hides the dew point — how much moisture the air is already carrying, and therefore how much room is left for your sweat to evaporate. Weihai's August 6am dew point averages 22.5°C, only two degrees below the air temperature itself. Combine the two (a standard rough coaching index — temperature plus dew point, in Fahrenheit) and August mornings sit around 149. For comparison, Verus's own Jamaica guide put Kingston's worst month at 150, and its Saudi Arabia guide put humid coastal Jeddah's worst month at 164. Weihai's summer isn't in the same league as the Gulf's worst — but it's a real, sticky, coastal-humid problem, not a mild one.
The range is the point
Run the same rough index for January's 6am reading — roughly -1.1°C air, -6°C dew point — and you get somewhere around 51. From 51 in January to 149 in August is a swing no Gulf-region city in Verus's coverage comes close to, because none of them has a real winter to swing away from.
July and August are also, separately, the wet months
Rain days more than double from June (6.3) to August (13.2) — in the archive, roughly two days out of every five in August saw measurable rain, against essentially none in the depths of winter. Combined with the humidity, this makes July-August the one stretch of the Weihai year that's genuinely unpleasant for both distance running and any trail conditions along the coast, rather than merely warm.
Why Weihai's entire race calendar skips summer
This isn't a guess — it's visible directly in when Weihai's actual events are scheduled. The Weihai Marathon ran its first edition on 9 November 2025. The Weihai Half Marathon's 2026 edition is set for 25 October. The Weihai 100 Ultra Trail runs in mid-May (16-17 May in 2026). Even T100 Weihai's 2027 date — 25-26 September — sits at the tail end of the wet, humid stretch rather than inside it, once September's rain days have dropped back to 6.6 and the 6am dew point has fallen from August's 22.5°C to 17.3°C. See Verus's T100 Weihai race guide for what else is and isn't confirmed about that race.
None of this is coincidence. Organisers here are working with the same eleven-year pattern this guide is, and every headline event on the calendar sits in spring or autumn as a result.
Winter is real, and worth planning for
January and February lows average below freezing, and December isn't far behind. Rain is essentially absent through the winter months — this is dry cold, not the raw, damp cold of somewhere like the UK or Ireland — but it's a genuine coastal winter with wind off the Yellow Sea to plan clothing around, not a mild near-miss. If you're used to Verus's Gulf-region or Caribbean guides, this is the one city where 'what to wear' means base layers and windproofing, not sun protection and electrolytes.
- May and October are the two most reliable windows: warm enough to be comfortable, before or after the worst of the July-August humidity, and matching when Weihai's own biggest events are actually held.
- June and September are usable but transitional — check the specific week's forecast rather than assuming the month as a whole behaves like its average.
- July-August: plan for genuine humidity and a real chance of rain, not just heat. This is the one stretch of the year to treat like Verus's Gulf-coast guides treat their worst months.
- December-February: dry, cold, occasionally below freezing at dawn — layer for wind off the coast rather than for cold alone.