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I am interested in hiking this fall in France and camping along the way. In order to figure what gear I need to pack to camp (particularly for the sleeping bag), I would like to know what temperatures to expect.

I am interested in historical temperatures to figure the usual temperature and I might look at them for other seasons. If that matters, I am thinking about hiking in the Pays Basque (South West of France), the mountainous part.

Where (ideally online and for free) can I find such data? Are there resources that cover Europe, or even the whole world?

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I tend to use WeatherSpark to look up historical data. Their main mode is kind of interactive browser (which is fun to play with by itself), but they also generate averages reports for all places their system knows about.

It's a little hard to pinpoint accurate location from your description, since Basque Country seems to more eagerly jump to Spain parts in geolocation. Don't forget that while we think of weather data as related to certain area, it's actually gathered in very specific points with weather stations (often airports).

I got report for Vitoria-Gasteiz, Spain, while searching for it there. You might want to browse around to refine for something closer to the area you are interested in.

Their reports have numerous graphs (temperature, humidity, clouds, winds, etc). For temperature I like their "fraction of time" visualizations:

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They also provide a convenient "tourism score" to help you pick out the best time to visit a given city:

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    After reading this answer, I have switched to using WeatherSpark for travel planning as well. Their graphical displays of historical averages are really impressive.
    – Chris Mueller
    Commented Mar 16, 2015 at 17:03
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I've always found Wunderground to be pretty useful for travel planning. You can look up the almanac data for any given day. This link has today's data for nearby Biarritz. In addition, their travel planner has the ability to look up the historical weather for a given stretch of time. This link shows an example of the data for Biarritz from October 1 through October 15 (pictured below).

enter image description here

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  • Great! Even though I am a bit confused by the Average Temperature given in Fahrenheit and the graph showing temperature in Celsius degrees.
    – Vince
    Commented Sep 12, 2014 at 14:01
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    I think the graph is in Farenheit also, the degree symbol is used with both temperature scales. If you prefer Celcius, it is possible to set everything on the website to display in Celsius by clicking the slider in the top right-hand corner.
    – Chris Mueller
    Commented Sep 12, 2014 at 14:04
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    @Vince All temperatures in the example are in Fahrenheit. At least, I'm pretty sure Biarritz doesn't get up to 85C, even in summer!
    – David Richerby
    Commented Sep 12, 2014 at 14:13
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    @ChrisMueller thanks I missed the slider. But when in Celsius mode, the module in the middle is still displayed with Fahrenheit degrees!
    – Vince
    Commented Sep 12, 2014 at 14:38
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    @Vince You are right, I guess you can't get the graphs to display in Celcius. It is an American website ;). The tables at the bottom contain all of the data in Celcius though; you could download them and do you own analysis :D
    – Chris Mueller
    Commented Sep 12, 2014 at 14:41
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Wikipedia's pages for towns, cities and regions often include a "Climate" section which generally includes average and record temperatures, rainfall and so on.

Also, I'm sure you know this but remember that the climate at the top of a mountain is likely to be very different than that at the bottom.

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To add to previous suggestions, you can have some information on the meteofrance (french public service) website.

For example, for Hendaye : http://www.meteofrance.com/previsions-meteo-france/hendaye/64700 where you can see at the page bottom average rain, temperatures, and so on.

(Rain is something to take into account if you plan to visit Pays Basque).

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Here is some good site with weather forecast. Check it here: Sat24

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