Typhoons and Da Lat: what actually happens in the city

Short answer: Da Lat does not get hit by typhoons the way the coast does. The city sits at 1500 metres behind the coastal range, and a cyclone falls apart on the mountains before it reaches the plateau. What does reach it is water — two or three days of rain, landslides on the passes, cancelled canyoning and power cuts. We checked every cyclone since 1991 against our own daily rainfall records: 140 came within 500 km, and only 31 of them gave the city heavy rain.

The number that matters A cyclone within 500 km brings Da Lat heavy rain 22% of the time. Within 150 km it is 42%. If it is November and within 150 km — 64%, two cases out of three. In the dry season the same cyclone at the same distance passes with almost no effect: 11%.

The closer it comes, the wetter it gets

Closest approach	Bring heavy rain
Within 150 km	42%
150–300 km	32%
300–500 km	10%

The month matters more than the strength

Season, cyclone within 300 km	Rain and peak
September to November	45% of cases, median 55 mm, peak 156 mm
April to June	40%, median 53 mm
December to March	11%, median 26 mm

Why November

In November the northeast monsoon reaches the coast and pushes moist air onto the windward slope with no cyclone at all. A typhoon adds its own water on top, and the two stack — hence 64% against 11% in the dry season. Of the seven strongest cyclone-related rains, six fell in November. The strength of the cyclone itself decides almost nothing: six typhoon-strength systems came near the city in 35 years and only one produced heavy rain — by the time they reach the plateau they are already falling apart.

What actually happened

When and which	Distance and rain
20 November 1998, Dawn	85 km · 156 mm in 48 hours
23 October 1992, Angela	149 km · 152 mm
4 November 2017, Damrey	62 km · 130 mm
14 November 1998, Chip	105 km · 125 mm
11 November 2019, Nakri	119 km · 109 mm
7 November 2006, Cimaron	85 km · 90 mm
2 November 2009, Mirinae	85 km · 89 mm

Half the heavy rain is not typhoons at all In 35 years the city saw 91 spells of 60 mm or more over 48 hours. Only 41 of them had a cyclone nearby — fewer than half. The record in our records, 164 mm on 29 December 2008, came with no typhoon at all. So the thing to watch is not cyclone news but the rain forecast: it accounts for both.

What shuts when it pours

The Prenn pass and the Nha Trang road: landslides and rocks on the surface, traffic stopping or down to one lane.
Canyoning and paragliding get cancelled — the river rises, the slopes run.
The waterfalls stay open but there is nothing to look at: muddy water, trails turned to soup.
Power goes off for a few hours, longer up in the hills.
Flights from Lien Khuong are more often delayed than cancelled: the runway is fine, but the aircraft does not arrive from Ho Chi Minh City.

How we warn The red banner on the site is triggered by the rain forecast, not by the news: if the model gives more over 48 hours than happens in 99 cases out of 100 for that month, you see a warning with the date and the consequences. The thresholds are per month: 60 mm in November is routine, in February it has not happened once in 35 years.

Cyclone tracks come from IBTrACS v04r01 (NOAA), western Pacific basin — 140 systems within 500 km of Da Lat since 1991. Rainfall is the city’s own daily record, 12,995 days since 1991. “Heavy rain” here means 60 mm or more over two consecutive days. The computation lives in dalat/scripts/typhoon_analogs.py. Checked on 8 August 2026.

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