Hue sää — maaliskuu

March is the end of the difficult half of the year in central Vietnam - the wet stretch runs November to February, and the region's best weather window is usually put at April to July - so March is the improving month rather than the settled one. Forum regulars describe early March as pleasant and warm enough to swim on this coast, while warning that cold waves off the northeast monsoon can push into March and occasionally to the start of April. Hue has its own reputation attached, summed up by a local line that the city has two seasons, rain and more rain. Our row bears that out even in an improving month: 11.7 precipitation days carrying 93.4mm, against 27.8C days that feel like 32C, 20.4C nights, humidity 87 percent and 9.2 hours of sun.

Regulars are honest this counts as a genuinely mixed-bag month here, hot and often sunny but with the wider region's wet season getting underway and showers an increasingly real possibility, sun protection stressed as essential given how intense the midday heat itself gets. Our row backs that hot, genuinely wet read, 33.3C reading as a scorching 41C, over 24.5C nights feeling 30C, with a substantial 214.2mm of rain across 19.2 days and humidity at 82 percent. Regulars are consistent hard-core sun protection plus a shawl or hat for shade are the standard advice regardless of how a given day turns out, central Vietnam's own pattern running differently from the south's calendar. The sea sits at a bath-warm 28.5C for anyone escaping the heat with a swim. The record: 10.3 hours of sun, an 11.9 kph wind and AQI 72.

Regulars call this the coldest and wettest month of the year here, with rain nearly every day, though they're careful to add it doesn't rain constantly and sunny breaks do happen. Our row backs the intensity directly, a striking 435mm of rain across 24 days, alongside a real cold-for-the-tropics feel, 23.8C reading as a real 26C, over 19C nights, and just 4.5 hours of sun a day - among the lowest sunshine figures in this project. Regulars describe the Perfume River as visibly swollen this time of year, generally not dangerous for an average visitor, though flooding along riverside tourist roads has occurred in past Decembers, more often in the first half of the month than the third week onward. A proper raincoat is far more useful than a winter coat. The sea sits at 25.3C. The record: humidity 86 percent, a 15.8 kph wind and AQI 64.

April is named as one of the best months to travel Vietnam because it is dry nearly everywhere, and regulars still warn that it will be quite hot in Hue - one recalls over 40C in the middle and end of the month. Our row's average high is 30.8C, which reads as 37C at 83 percent humidity; the days they remember are the top of a range, not its middle. Their other point holds: mid-April carries a low chance of rain and is less humid than Hanoi, though 108.2mm across 10.4 days says this is not a dry month in absolute terms, only relative to the autumn here. The figure to check is the air, at AQI 99. The record: 22.6C nights, 9.9 hours of sun and a 25.9C sea.

January in Hue is the tail of central Vietnam's wet season, not the start of the dry one, and regulars describe it plainly: cool for Vietnam, drizzly, with the rains only about to end and the region still capable of flooding. Our row is the wettest in this whole collection - 195.1mm across 19.9 precipitation days at 86 percent humidity, under just 6.2 hours of sun a day. Their figures of 16 to 21C read as a daily average rather than an afternoon peak; our row's 23.8C day over a 17.9C night reaches the cool end they mean after dark, and feels like 27C in the middle of the day because of the damp. Travellers who want sun in January are pointed south. Come for the citadel and the tombs, with a coat and a plan for grey. The record: a 22.5C sea and AQI 63.