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Hong Kong has a monsoon-influenced humid subtropical climate.
Hot, wet summers and cool, dry winters — here's what that means in plain terms.
What this climate feels like
The four things a regular visitor actually wants to know:
Highs near 33°C in July.
Lows near 14°C in January.
About 1683 mm of rain a year. Wettest in June.
Cloudy skies much of the year.
What "monsoon-influenced humid subtropical" means
Climate scientists sort every place on Earth into about 30 climate types, based on how hot, cold, wet and dry it is across the year. Hong Kong's type — monsoon-influenced humid subtropical — sits in the broad family of mild, temperate climates. Despite the name, winters here still bring real cold; the "subtropical" name refers to summer heat and humidity.
Researchers write climate types as a short letter code. Here is what each letter means:
Cities with the same climate as Hong Kong
A monsoon-influenced humid subtropical climate (Cwa) — these recognizable cities share it. If you know one of them, you know roughly what to expect.
Hong Kong sits near a climate boundary
This city's climate sits within about 1.3 °C of the next type along. A slightly cooler or warmer decade could change which side of the boundary it lands on — but the lived weather doesn't change at the line.
Has Hong Kong's climate type changed?
Stable — Hong Kong's climate has held the same type between the 1971–2000 and 1991–2020 normals. The label is steady; the climate beneath it is still warming.
What this climate means for you
Rice, citrus, tea, sugarcane — the monsoon supports double-cropping. Winter vegetables grow well in the dry, cool months.
The cool, dry winter (Nov–Mar) is the classic travel window. Summer is hot, humid and often disrupted by heavy rain.
Hot, sticky summers with monsoon rains; pleasantly cool, dry winters. Two starkly different halves of the year.
Where these numbers come from
The climate type and the month-by-month figures on this page are computed from Hong Kong's measured 30-year climate normals (1991–2020) — the same official records behind Hong Kong's main climate page, so the two always agree.
Long-range climate maps measure things slightly differently and can place a city in a neighbouring category. Where they differ, this page uses the measured station record as the climate today.
Methodology & sources
Temperature & precipitation — 1991–2020 normals computed from 30 years of daily observations at Hong Kong Intl, a weather station, about 27 km from the city centre. The underlying daily records come from NOAA's global station network.