Vietnam weather in November: dry places and wet places

On a bad November week the centre looks like this. On 18 November 2025 Hoi An's old town flooded for the third time in three weeks: riverside streets near the Hoai River stood under more than a metre of water, and the An Hoi bridge to the night market "turned into a river itself". Tourists still crowded the Japanese Covered Bridge (Chùa Cầu), wading through flooded streets to reach it, while small boats ferried locals and visitors between the drowned streets from a dry stretch of Tran Phu (VnExpress International). Cafés near the water's edge stayed open, and visitors sat with coffee watching the river swell a few feet away (VietNamNet). Not everyone stayed for the show: Sae, a German visitor caught by that autumn's floods, left Hoi An two days early and finished her trip in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City.

November rain from driest to wettest

The table uses November mean temperature, rain, and rain days for each place with a rainfall record. Ho Chi Minh City's temperature comes from the Japan Meteorological Agency's normals for its Tan Son Hoa station, which publish no rainfall normal, so the city has no rain or rain-days figure here.

Ha Long Bay is the driest listed place by November rain at 38.9 mm. Hanoi and Ninh Binh follow below 70 mm. The northern mountain stations are cooler, but Sa Pa still records 106.3 mm and 13.8 rain days.

The central coast is the wet side

The central coast changes the November picture. Every station from Phong Nha down to Nha Trang averages more than 300 mm of rain and at least 17 rain days, roughly five to ten times Hanoi's total.

Hue is the wettest listed place in November at 641.7 mm. Quy Nhon has slightly more rain days at 21.9 against Hue's 20.9, but less rain. In the north, November rain is below 110 mm at every listed station.

November is already Nha Trang's wettest month in its twelve-month table. Quy Nhon is close to its wettest point, but October is higher there at 521 mm, making November the second wettest month. That distinction matters when comparing the two coastal stops.

The Nha Trang page has the full station table behind that wet-month pattern, and Nha Trang weather by month walks through all twelve months. The Vietnam travel hub has the destination pages for the north, central coast, and south.

If Hoi An is on your route anyway, November's lantern night falls on Sunday 22 November 2026. Check the flood warnings that morning, because the riverside streets are the ones that went under in November 2025.

Typhoons in November

November is storm month for the south-central coast, not the north. In the storm tracks we counted for 1991 to 2025, Quy Nhon had 12 storms pass near it in November, Nha Trang 9 and Da Lat 8, more than in any other month at each place. Hanoi had none in November, and Phu Quoc one in 35 years. For November 2026 to January 2027, Vietnam's national forecast centre expects fewer storms than usual on the East Sea, but still spells of heavy rain from Ha Tinh to Hue and on the south-central coast. Our typhoon season guide has the count for every place, month by month.

This VTV report (in Vietnamese) covers prolonged heavy rain across central Vietnam and night-time evacuations from flooded parts of Khanh Hoa.

Temperatures change more than the rain order

November mean temperatures range from 12.5°C in Sa Pa to 27.5°C in Ho Chi Minh City, and rain and temperature don't point to the same route. Sa Pa is the coolest row yet wetter than the northern lowlands; the south is warmest, with more rain than Hanoi but a fraction of the central coast's.

A trip that crosses regions has to plan for all of this at once: a warm layer for Sa Pa, a rain plan for the central coast, and summer clothes for the southern islands. The month-by-month guide shows how the split changes in December.

Day highs, night lows and sunshine in November

The gap between the average high and low runs from 4.1 degrees at Con Dao to 8.1 degrees at Ha Giang. The same regulation gives the average daily high and low and the monthly hours of sunshine for every place except Ho Chi Minh City, whose record here is the JMA station and has no highs, lows or sunshine.

Sa Pa's average night falls to 10.2°C, and Da Lat's to 14.6°C. Phu Quoc gets the most sun at 210.1 hours, more than twice Phong Nha's 95.6. Hue, the wettest row, has the second lowest sunshine total at 101.2 hours.

Is November drier than October in Vietnam?

Yes, at every listed place except Nha Trang. Nha Trang goes from 312.3 mm in October to 381.6 mm in November. Everywhere else the total falls, and December is lower again at every station.

Hanoi goes from 140.7 mm in October to 66.7 mm in November and 20.2 mm in December. Phu Quoc's rain days fall from 21.5 to 13.8 to 6.2, and the Mekong Delta's from 21.8 to 13.6 to 6.5.

The coast from Hue to Quy Nhon dries more slowly. Hue goes from 772.7 mm in October to 641.7 mm in November and 349.9 mm in December, and its rain days stay between 20.2 and 20.9 across all three months. Hoi An and Da Nang go from 628 mm to 448.2 mm to 218.4 mm, and Quy Nhon from 521 mm to 464.3 mm to 205.5 mm.

What Vietnam's tourism board says about November

Vietnam Tourism, the national tourism site, describes the same split in words. It gives September to November as the best time for Ha Long Bay, when autumn brings clear, calm days for cruising, and says autumn in Ninh Binh is cool and clear. For the centre it warns of the opposite: heavy rain and typhoons can hit Hue from September to November, Phong Nha's flood-prone months run from September to December, and Da Nang's rainy season runs from November to February.

That matches the station tables above for Hue and Phong Nha: September, October and November, inside the wet spells the tourism board names for both, are the three wettest months at each station in the regulation. The Hoi An and Da Nang row fits the board's wording less neatly, because its wettest month in the regulation is October, before the November-to-February season the board describes.

Asked about riding a motorbike through central Vietnam in November, one r/VietNam user described the previous year:

"I’d try and go more in land, last year in November I took the bus from Hanoi to Hoi an and I got stranded in hue because of all the flood water. If I bus can’t go through it then a scooter definitely can’t."

u/Honest_Committee5954 on r/VietNam

What this does not tell you

Each row represents a different station. Sa Pa's station sits 1,570 m above sea level, while Hue's is at 17 m. The table does not describe rain at every hotel, beach, or mountain road. Ho Chi Minh City has no rain row because its station normals publish none. The regulation does not state the observation period of its tables.

In a thread from a traveler who booked Da Nang for November, another user took a calmer view:

"You never know. Most of the rain could be happening right now. Go and enjoy. Sit in coffee cafes and tour the city if it rains."

u/Fresh-Ant1149 on r/VietNam

Our take on Vietnam weather in November

November is a good month for the north and the south and a poor one for the central coast. Ha Long Bay, Hanoi and Ninh Binh have the least rain and fewer than eight rain days. Hue, Hoi An and Da Nang, Quy Nhon and Nha Trang all average more than 380 mm. If your route has to include the centre, put it at the end of the month or move it into December, when every station in the table is drier again.

How we checked this

The station figures come from the QCVN 02:2022/BXD regulation, read from the government PDF; Ho Chi Minh City's temperature from the Japan Meteorological Agency normals; the season notes from Vietnam Tourism's destination pages. We matched each October, November and December value for all 14 stations in six tables against the PDF itself on 2026-10-08. Vietnam Tourism moved and rewrote its destination pages, and its Hoi An page now redirects to Da Nang, so we re-read the season notes on 2026-10-12. On 21 October 2026 we downloaded the PDF again and matched every station figure once more; none had changed. Rankings and differences are our own arithmetic from those values. On 22 October 2026 we added the November storm counts from our IBTrACS count (1991 to 2025, the same data as the typhoon guide), the national forecast centre's outlook of 15 October, the lantern night date we computed for the Hoi An lantern post, and the November 2025 flood scenes from VnExpress International and VietNamNet. Last reviewed 2026-10-22.

References

• QCVN 02:2022/BXD, National technical regulation on natural physical and climatic data for construction: https://datafiles.chinhphu.vn/cpp/files/vbpq/2022/10/02-bxd.pdf. Checked 2026-09.
• Vietnam Tourism destination pages for Ninh Binh, Ha Long Bay, Hue, Phong Nha and Da Nang: season notes. Checked 2026-10-12.
• JMA ClimatView monthly normals, station 48900 Tan Son Hoa: https://ds.data.jma.go.jp/tcc/tcc/products/climate/climatview/graph_mkhtml_nrm.php?n=48900&y=2026&m=8&e=7&r=1&s=1&k=0. Checked 2026-09.
• National Centre for Hydro-Meteorological Forecasting, seasonal outlook of 15 October 2026 (in Vietnamese): https://thoitietvietnam.gov.vn/upload/khihau/2026/10/15/dbqg_khhm_20261015_1500.pdf. Checked 2026-10-22.
• IBTrACS, NOAA's International Best Track Archive for Climate Stewardship: https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/products/international-best-track-archive. Our count, re-run 2026-10-21.

Photo (cover): Diego Fernández Sánchez / Unsplash

Data checked against the source PDF: 8 October 2026.