Weather in Honolulu in October

A good month. October is a solid month to be in Honolulu. You should expect rain on 16 days of the month, which is more days wet than dry.

Honolulu barely has seasons. October scores 69 out of 100 against a best of 81 in May — a gap small enough that the month you choose matters far less here than the week you choose. Worth keeping in perspective: October is the weakest month of Honolulu's year and it is still a perfectly good one. The downside here is small.

This is persistent light rain rather than storms: 16 wet days but only 1 heavy ones. It rarely cancels anything outright, and it rarely fully clears either. A jacket beats an umbrella. Nothing specialised needed — this is the month you pack for the trip rather than for the weather.

What the averages hide

Averages flatten a month, and this one hides a few things: it never really gets hot: not one day in an average October reaches 30 °C; the day barely swings — 2.8 °C between the overnight low and the afternoon high. Across the twenty years measured, the hottest October day reached 30.4 °C and the coldest night fell to 22.8 °C, and the wettest single day dropped 50 mm — roughly 68% of the month's rain in one day.

October is moderately variable: 9 mm in the driest year against 172 mm in the wettest, around an average of 74 mm. Roughly two Octobers in three land near that average, and the third does something else entirely.

Wind sits around 17.9 km/h — a steady breeze rather than a nuisance, and welcome on the warmer days, and humidity runs at 75%, high enough to notice on the warm days without dominating them.

How October sits in the year

Temperatures hold steady either side: 28.6 °C in September, 28 here, 26.7 in November. Nothing about the timing within the month matters much.

Daylight in October

11.7 hours of daylight, losing 0.6 hours across the month. That is between Honolulu's extremes of 13.4 and 10.8 hours, so days are long enough not to constrain the plan.

Sea temperature

The sea sits at about 26.4 °C in October — warm enough to stay in as long as you like. 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 Honolulu versus nearby

Honolulu has no close neighbour worth comparing against, so the useful question is how October there compares with October elsewhere. San Francisco in October is a different proposition entirely — 5.4 °C cooler, and the easier month overall — 22.6 °C and rain on 4 days, against 28 °C and 16 here. San Jose in October is a clearly better month — 26.6 °C and rain on 3 days, against 28 °C and 16 here.

So: October works, with May the better month by 12 points if the dates can move. If they cannot, nothing here should stop you booking.

Every month in Honolulu

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