By Harry Nara · Last updated
Choose Your Season
Broader overviews covering weather patterns, events, and highlights across an entire season.
Plan by Month
Each month at a glance — temperature, crowds, and one click to the full guide.
Events & Festivals
Dates, where to watch, and what each one actually costs.
October to December Is the Easy Stretch
Once the winter monsoon sets in from the north-east in October, the air dries out. Humidity drops to about 70%, its lowest of the year, the sky is the least cloudy it gets, and rain falls on five to eight days a month where summer brings eighteen or nineteen. Highs ease from 28°C in October to 20°C by December. This is walking season on the ridge trails above the city, when a full day outdoors stops being an endurance test. Free to choose your dates, choose these.
Four-Fifths of the Rain in Five Months
May to September brings about 1,940 of the city’s 2,430 millimetres a year, and June alone brings almost 500. Highs sit at 29 to 32°C, summer nights stay around 26°C, and humidity stays above 80%, so the heat weighs more than its figures do. The rain tends to come as cloudbursts rather than drizzle. The Observatory grades them amber, red and black, and under a black warning people are told to stay indoors until it passes.
When Signal No. 8 Goes Up
Typhoons can reach Hong Kong at any time from May to November, and the signals are up most often in August and September. No. 3 means strong wind, and daily life mostly carries on. No. 8 means gales: schools and most offices shut, ferries stop sailing, buses thin out and then halt, and the MTR keeps running. Plans in these months need a spare day rather than a different month.
A Damp, Grey Spring
March to May warms from 18°C to 29°C under some of the heaviest cloud of the year, with humidity above 80%. On the dampest days walls and floors sweat with condensation, and fog and drizzle can hold up ferries and flights. It is pleasant enough for walking the city, less reliable for the view from the Peak.
A Short Winter With the New Year in It
December to February runs from 15°C to 20°C, and a cold front can push the urban low below 10°C for a night or two. Lunar New Year lands in late January or February, with three days of public holiday, a night parade and fireworks over the harbour. Plenty of family-run places shut for several days around it, while the malls and the big attractions stay open.
Our Hong Kong Guides
Between May and November the warning signals settle more about a day here than the temperature does, so each guide for those months explains what the signals do to a day out before turning to what the season offers.