Weather in Shanghai in October

Prime time. If you get to pick your dates, October is the one. Highs average 23.4 °C, lows 15.9 °C, and rain falls on 7 days — nothing in the month is working against you.

October is the highest-scoring month of the twelve. The nearest rival is April, and the month at the other end of the year is August.

Rain on 7 days, 2 of them heavy. Enough to need a plan B, not enough to need a plan around it. 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. Across the twenty years measured, the hottest October day reached 32.3 °C and the coldest night fell to 8 °C, and the wettest single day dropped 105 mm — roughly 136% of the month's rain in one day.

This is the volatile part. October rainfall has ranged from 12 mm to 253 mm across the twenty years measured — a 241 mm spread around an average of 77 mm. The average is real but almost no individual October looks like it, so treat the figure as the middle of a wide range rather than a forecast.

Wind is light at 13 km/h, so the temperature on the page is close to the temperature on your skin, and humidity runs at 76%, high enough to notice on the warm days without dominating them.

How October sits in the year

The month is on the way down: 4.8 °C cooler than September, with November dropping another 5.7 °C. The first week and the last are not the same trip. Rain has already shifted: 5 days fewer than September had.

Daylight in October

11.5 hours of daylight, losing 0.9 hours across the month. That is between Shanghai's extremes of 14.2 and 10.1 hours, so days are long enough not to constrain the plan.

Sea temperature

The sea sits at about 22.4 °C in October — comfortable for a proper swim. The sea peaks at 27.5 °C in August and bottoms out at 8.5 °C — water lags the air by a month or two, which is why the best swimming often comes after the best weather.

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.

October in Shanghai versus nearby

If Shanghai is one option among several, the nearby comparison is worth making. Hangzhou is close enough to be a coin toss — within a degree on temperature, the same number of rain days. Nanjing is close enough to be a coin toss — within a degree on temperature, the same number of rain days.

So: October is the answer for Shanghai. If it is booked out or priced out, April is the next best thing at 9 points behind, and August is the month to keep off the shortlist.

Every month in Shanghai

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