Weather in Cartagena in October

Shoulder season. October sits in between. You will get good days and you will lose some. You should expect rain on 27 days of the month, which is more days wet than dry.

October ranks 6 of 12 in Cartagena: past the worst of the year but short of January, which is the month to book if the dates are open.

Rain on 27 of the month's 31 days, 7 of them heavy. At that frequency a wet-weather backup is not a contingency, it is the itinerary — book the indoor things first and treat the clear days as the bonus. Natural fibres and a second shirt for the day. At 82% nothing dries, including you.

What the averages hide

Averages flatten a month, and this one hides a few things: 5 days top 30 °C — hot spells arrive, but they break; the day barely swings — 1.7 °C between the overnight low and the afternoon high. Across the twenty years measured, the hottest October day reached 32.1 °C and the coldest night fell to 25.2 °C, and the wettest single day dropped 92 mm — roughly 38% of the month's rain in one day.

October is moderately variable: 16 mm in the driest year against 638 mm in the wettest, around an average of 242 mm. Roughly two Octobers in three land near that average, and the third does something else entirely.

Wind is light at 11.4 km/h, so the temperature on the page is close to the temperature on your skin, and humidity runs at 82%, high enough to notice on the warm days without dominating them.

How October sits in the year

Temperatures hold steady either side: 29.5 °C in September, 29 here, 29.1 in November. Nothing about the timing within the month matters much. Rain is the thing that moves: November brings 6 days less of it, so pushing the dates later buys drier weather.

Daylight in October

Cartagena sits close enough to the equator that daylight barely moves all year — 11.9 hours in October, against a range of just 1.2 hours across the whole calendar. Sunrise and sunset land at roughly the same time whenever you come.

Sea temperature

The sea sits at about 29.3 °C in October — warm enough that the water offers no relief from the heat. This is the warmest the water gets all year.

How busy it gets

Off season. The genuine off season: cheapest by a distance, with the caveat that some tours and restaurants close entirely.

Crowd levels are estimated from climate desirability and school-holiday calendars, not from visitor numbers.

October in Cartagena versus nearby

If Cartagena is one option among several, the nearby comparison is worth making. Barranquilla is close enough to be a coin toss — within a degree on temperature, 1 day less rain. Medellín is a better bet in October — 5.1 °C cooler, the same number of rain days.

So: October is a compromise. January is 33 points better and is what Cartagena is actually like at its best — worth moving the trip for if that is possible, and worth adjusting expectations for if it is not.

Every month in Cartagena

See all twelve months in Cartagena, or where else to go in October.