Weather in Hanoi in January

Prime time. If you get to pick your dates, January is the one. Highs average 21.3 °C, lows 11.6 °C, and rain falls on 5 days — nothing in the month is working against you.

January ranks 2 of 12 in Hanoi. Only December scores clearly higher, and the difference is small enough to be settled by price rather than weather.

Rain falls on only 5 days, so an itinerary with no wet-weather fallback is a reasonable risk. Nothing specialised needed — this is the month you pack for the trip rather than for the weather.

What the averages hide

The averages here are honest — no hidden extremes worth planning around. Across the twenty years measured, the hottest January day reached 33 °C and the coldest night fell to 2 °C, and the wettest single day dropped 41 mm — roughly 128% of the month's rain in one day.

This is the volatile part. January rainfall has ranged from 2 mm to 108 mm across the twenty years measured — a 106 mm spread around an average of 32 mm. The average is real but almost no individual January looks like it, so treat the figure as the middle of a wide range rather than a forecast.

Wind is light at 6.5 km/h, so the temperature on the page is close to the temperature on your skin, and humidity runs at 81%, high enough to notice on the warm days without dominating them.

How January sits in the year

Temperatures hold steady either side: 21.6 °C in December, 21.3 here, 24.6 in February. Nothing about the timing within the month matters much.

Daylight in January

January sits at the dark end of Hanoi's year — 11 hours of daylight against 13.4 at midsummer, holding steady all month. Sightseeing days are genuinely shorter, and an itinerary built for summer will not fit.

An inland climate

Despite being inland, the year stays fairly even: 21.2 °C between the year's warmest afternoons and coldest nights.

How busy it gets

Peak season. Expect the highest prices of the year and to be booking well ahead.

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

January in Hanoi versus nearby

If Hanoi is one option among several, the nearby comparison is worth making. Haiphong is close enough to be a coin toss — within a degree on temperature, 1 day more rain. Thanh Hóa is close enough to be a coin toss — within a degree on temperature, the same number of rain days.

So: January is effectively as good as it gets here — 1 points behind December, which is inside the margin where the weather stops being the deciding factor and price starts being it.

Every month in Hanoi

See all twelve months in Hanoi, or where else to go in January.