Province-wide /Seasons and weather
February to May is when I tell friends to come: dry, the sea between 25.5 and 29 degrees, under 70 mm of rain a month. June to August is hot and fine, September turns, and October and November are the two months to avoid unless you like rain. The highlands and the dry south run on different rules.
Come between February and May. That is the answer I give every friend who asks, and after two full turns of the calendar here I have not found a reason to change it: those four months are dry, the sea is warm, and the wind that makes the winter sea cloudy has dropped. June to August is hotter and still good. September turns. October and November are the months to avoid unless you like rain, and December is a coin toss that usually comes up wet.
The figures below are the Nha Trang station normals, with sea temperatures from a climate site and the Phan Rang column from that station’s own table. The three stations on this coast disagree with each other by a fair margin in some months, so I have kept them apart rather than blending them.
| Month | Nha Trang high (C) | Nha Trang rain (mm) | Rain days | Sea (C) | Phan Rang rain (mm) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| January | 26.9 | 38 | 7.8 | 25.5 | 8.8 |
| February | 27.7 | 16 | 4 | 25.5 | 2.8 |
| March | 29.3 | 31 | 3.3 | 26.5 | 12.0 |
| April | 31.0 | 35 | 4.3 | 28 | 20.4 |
| May | 32.3 | 70 | 8.5 | 29 | 65.6 |
| June | 32.5 | 59 | 9.2 | 29 | 61.7 |
| July | 32.4 | 36 | 8.4 | 28.5 | 54.7 |
| August | 32.5 | 50 | 9.6 | 28.5 | 51.2 |
| September | 31.5 | 159 | 15.2 | 29 | 138.6 |
| October | 29.7 | 302 | 17.7 | 28.5 | 168.1 |
| November | 28.2 | 332 | 17.6 | 27 | 171.0 |
| December | 26.9 | 153 | 14 | 26 | 83.6 |
Nha Trang gets about 1,280 mm a year on 119.5 rainy days, and October and November together bring 634 mm of it, roughly half. Cam Ranh’s station, down the coast, records 1,324.5 mm and slightly hotter afternoons. Phan Rang gets 838.5 mm and is both the driest and the sunniest station in Vietnam, with 3,029 hours of sun a year.
The coolest, driest stretch, and my favourite. January mornings can feel almost cold on a motorbike at 06:00 and the afternoon high is under 27 degrees; February is the driest month of the year at 16 mm. The sea is at its coolest, 25.5 degrees, which is still warmer than most people’s summer holidays. The catch is the wind. It blows from the north-east into March, and on the Cam Ranh coast the water stays cloudy and choppy until it drops; the kite riders at Bai Dai and My Hoa love it for exactly that reason. Tet falls in this window, and over Tet in February 2026 the Nha Trang rescue team pulled ten people out of rough seas in a single incident. By March the wind eases and the sea clears. This is when I ride the passes and go to the dry south.
April and May are the beach months. Rain is under 70 mm, the sea is 28 to 29 degrees, and the flats of Bai Dai and Doc Let are at their best in the morning before the heat. From May the afternoon storms begin: short, loud and over in an hour, the sort of thing you sit out with a coffee. The highs go past 32 degrees and stay there until September. There is a weaker secondary typhoon window from late April to late June, which in two years has meant nothing worse than a grey day or two. Jellyfish are the real nuisance of the season; the sister guides put the peak at April to August.
Hot, humid and, in Nha Trang, surprisingly dry: July is 36 mm. This is durian season on the Khanh Son plateau, which is the coolest place to be in the province in August, and it is the second grape crop in the south. The sea is calm and clear, and it is the period local operators call island-tour season. September is the hinge. Rain jumps to 159 mm, the typhoon window opens at the start of the month, and the sea is still 29 degrees but no longer reliable. Early September is fine; by the end of the month I am checking forecasts every morning.
October and November are the two months I would tell you not to come, and I say that as someone who has spent two of each here. Nha Trang records 302 mm in October and 332 mm in November, on roughly 18 rain days each, and November has the fewest hours of sun in the year, 142. The sea is high and brown, red flags fly on Tran Phu, and two tourists were swept off that beach on 21 December 2024 while photographing the waves; one died. The mountain roads are worse: the Khanh Le pass to Da Lat closed for about a week after a landslide on 15 December 2024, and again from 17 November 2025 after a rockslide killed six people on a bus, and the only road into Khanh Son was blocked by fallen trees on 6 November 2025. The typhoon window runs to about 10 December. December dries out in the second half but still records 153 mm. What the rain months are actually like, and why I do not leave, is in what Nha Trang is really like in October and November.
Hon Ba, the 1,578 m mountain above Nha Trang with Yersin’s rebuilt house on top, is cool and damp all year; a Tuoi Tre report in June 2024 gave 17 to 20 degrees on the summit while the coast was above 32. The road up is 37 km of hairpins from Suoi Dau. Khanh Son, the plateau behind Cam Ranh, sits at roughly 1,000 m by a travel site’s figure, since no station data exists; it is cool year-round, best from December to June, with a sea of cloud in the To Hap valley around 05:30 to 06:30. Neither has a weather station I could find, and Khanh Son’s single road closed in the storm of 6 November 2025. I have written up Hon Ba, the mountain where it gets cold and Khanh Son in durian season separately.
The former Ninh Thuan, which joined the province in July 2025, is the driest place in Vietnam. Phan Rang records 838.5 mm a year, February brings 2.8 mm, and VnExpress cites research putting the old province’s average at 700 to 800 mm with drought years at 60 to 70 percent of that. Its rain falls almost entirely from September to December. In practice this means Vinh Hy, Hang Rai and the Cham towers are a reasonable bet in months when Nha Trang is not, and that the wind season from November to March is the point of the place if you kite and the reason to stay out of the water if you do not. See kitesurfing season in Phan Rang.
If you can pick the month, pick February to May, in that order of preference, and read the beaches ranked for where to swim. June to August, come anyway, swim early, sit out the afternoon storm and go up to Khanh Son for the durian. September, book the first half. October and November, come only if you have a reason that is not the beach, and stay off the mountain passes. December, gamble on the second half. The Nha Trang Guide weather page and the Cam Ranh Guide weather page carry the same station tables with more detail.
February to May. February is the driest month at 16 mm in Nha Trang, the sea is 25.5 to 29 degrees across the four months, and by March the winter wind has dropped. May adds afternoon storms but is still a beach month.
September to December, peaking in October (302 mm) and November (332 mm), which together bring about half the year's 1,280 mm. The typhoon window runs from early September to about 10 December.
Only with a reason that is not the beach. Expect roughly 18 rain days a month, a high brown sea with red flags, and mountain passes that closed in landslides in both 2024 and 2025. Rates fall, which is the one upside.
Much drier: 838.5 mm a year against Nha Trang's 1,280 mm, with 3,029 hours of sun. February brings 2.8 mm. Its rain falls almost entirely from September to December, so it is a sound bet in months when the north coast is grey.
Afternoon highs at the Nha Trang station run from 26.9 degrees in December and January to 32.5 in June and August; Cam Ranh's station runs about a degree hotter. Hon Ba's summit was 17 to 20 degrees in a June 2024 report.
Read on 15 September 2026. Prices, hours and rules change; these are the pages the figures came from.
Dai Lanh is the best beach in the province and Doc Let the easiest good day out. Bai Dai and Binh Lap come next, Ninh Chu is the south's beach, and the Nha Trang city beach is good at dawn and poor by noon. Hang Rai is on the list only to say it is not for swimming.
Mango in April and May in Cam Lam, durian in late July and August in Khanh Son, grapes in three crops around Phan Rang with the sweetest in August and September, green apples from March to May, pomelo from late July in Khanh Vinh. October to December is the gap. The table has the months, the sections have where I buy and what a sourced price looked like.
Hang Rai is a raised shelf of fossil coral on the DT702 coast road, run as the visitor site of Nui Chua National Park, and it is not for swimming. Go at first light on a falling tide for the water sheeting off the terraces, and between December and March for the green moss. I never found an official fee; travel sites quote 30,000 to 35,000 VND.
Between November and March Bai Dai is windy, mostly unswimmable and nearly empty, and it is the season I like it best. The beach is public and free from the gaps between the resorts, the tide covers the bathing areas for about half the year, and the kite riders rig at the windy northern end. This is the beach from the public access points, not from a resort.
