December in Petrolina, Brazil, brings average daily highs of 35°C and overnight lows of 24°C in the 2016–2025 historical record. Allow room to shorten long outdoor plans when the day's forecast is hotter than you want. A schedule with easy breaks and less travelling between stops will give you more choices.
In the record, at least 1 mm of rain or snow falls on 5 of 31 days on average, a daily chance of 16%. Leave some freedom to swap an outdoor day with a sheltered one. There is no need to read the average as a fixed number of lost days; it says nothing about how long rain lasts on each occasion.
The calculated day length, sunrise to sunset, averages about 13 hours. Sunshine averages 11 hours a day. Use the daylight window to plan the length of excursions, and check local sunrise and sunset times for the dates of your stay. Sunshine is a separate measure, and those hours need not arrive in one uninterrupted stretch.
For nature trips or walks, keep the longest outings movable and check route conditions locally; a monthly climate average cannot establish whether a particular path is accessible. For a culture-focused visit, group the places you want to see into manageable areas, with time between stops. Check each venue's opening dates before fixing the order.
January has an average daily high of 34°C, 1°C lower than December. Its historical rain-day chance is 27%, compared with 16% this month. If your dates are flexible, compare those trade-offs with the kind of days you want. Neither set of averages predicts the conditions of one particular holiday.