What is the weather like in Morocco overall?

People picture Morocco as one big hot desert, and then they step off the plane in Marrakech in January and need a coat by 6pm. The truth I tell every traveller is that Morocco is not one climate, it is four, and you often cross two or three of them in a single day. The northern coast around Tangier and Tetouan is properly Mediterranean: green hills, wet winters, warm dry summers. The Atlantic coast from Rabat down to Essaouira is oceanic, cooler and breezier than the figures suggest. The High Atlas in the middle is alpine, with snow on the peaks for months. And behind the mountains, in the south-east where I spend most of my year, it is full Sahara.

What this means in practice is that altitude and the mountains matter more than the calendar. I have driven a group from Marrakech at 28°C, over the Tizi n'Tichka pass where we stopped to throw snowballs at 2,260 metres, and down into Ouarzazate where it was hot and bone-dry again, all before lunch. The Atlas wall is the great divider: it catches the Atlantic weather and keeps the south arid. North and west of it is greener and wetter; south and east is desert. When someone asks me what to pack, I never give one answer, I ask which regions they are crossing.

Seasonally the rhythm is simple. Winters (December to February) are mild but genuinely cold at night and at altitude, with most of the year's rain falling then. Springs (March to May) and autumns (September to November) are the sweet spot almost everywhere, warm days, comfortable evenings, low rain. Summers (June to August) are hot, often brutally so inland and in the desert, while the Atlantic coast stays merciful thanks to the ocean breeze. That coastal escape is why Casablanca and Essaouira fill up with Moroccans in August.

My honest overview for planning: come in shoulder season if you can, layer for big day-to-night swings inland, and respect the desert and the mountains as their own weather worlds rather than assuming the whole country feels like the coast. Once you understand the four-climate map, Morocco stops surprising you and you can plan a trip that follows the good weather around the country instead of fighting it.