When to Go to Boracay: The Two Monsoons and a Month-by-Month Table

PAGASA describes the Philippine climate as tropical and maritime and divides the year by rainfall and temperature. The rainy season runs from June to November. The dry season runs from December to May and has two parts: a cool dry season from December to February and a hot dry season from March to May¹.

The wind seasons have their own names. The Habagat is the southwest monsoon. PAGASA’s declared start in 2025 was 30 May, and in October 2025 it said the Habagat had been weakening for weeks³. The Amihan is the northeast monsoon. PAGASA declared its onset on 27 October 2025, expecting cool, dry air across most of the country and also “rough sea conditions and shear lines”². Neither source gives an end date for Amihan, and the 2026 Habagat onset is not in the sources used here, so treat the declared dates as one year’s example, not a calendar.

The Habagat was still cancelling boats in August 2026: the Philippine Ports Authority listed sea trips cancelled “due to inclement weather caused by the Southwest Monsoon (Habagat)” as of 8 a.m. on 10 August 2026, including a Bulalacao to Caticlan sailing⁹.

What each monsoon does to each coast

A University of the Philippines seminar abstract that modelled White Beach and Bulabog (15 November 2024) finds the island oriented northwest to southeast. White Beach faces the southwesterly winds directly and Bulabog faces the northeasterly winds⁴. The result is higher wind and wave setup at White Beach in southwest (Habagat) conditions and lower at Bulabog, with the reverse in northeast (Amihan) conditions⁴.

In the storm the paper examined, Typhoon Haiyan on 8 November 2013, winds were mostly northeasterly in the month but the peak storm winds around Boracay were southwesterly. White Beach had a storm surge with a maximum water level of 1.2 m, while Bulabog “was stable”⁴. For the east-coast beach see Bulabog Beach.

There is no PAGASA station on Boracay⁵. The table uses two stand-ins, and every column says which it is.

Sources: Roxas City column from PAGASA’s climatological normals⁵; the NASA columns (rain, temperature, humidity) from NASA POWER’s 2001-2020 climatology for 11.97 N, 121.92 E⁶; sea temperature from the Open-Meteo Marine model, 2015-2024⁷.

How to read it:

• Roxas City is the PAGASA gauge. It is the nearest station on PAGASA’s normals list, at 11.60 N, 122.75 E, roughly 100 km east of Boracay and on a different coast⁵⁸. PAGASA calls normals 30-year averages but does not state the base period or label the units; the figures are read here as millimetres of rain per month⁵.
• The NASA columns are modelled, not measured. NASA POWER’s figures come from a reanalysis model (MERRA-2)⁶. Rain there is a daily average converted to a monthly total by multiplying by the days in the month.
• Sea temperature is a model mean too. It is the average of hourly model values over ten years, and the bracket is the lowest and highest hourly value⁷. No measured series for the waters off the island is published in the sources used here.
• No rainy-day counts. No source gives a count of rainy days for Boracay, so this page gives none.

Sources disagree The two rain columns agree on the pattern: driest from February to April, sharply wetter from May. They differ on size by up to a factor of two in July (253.4 mm at the Roxas City gauge against 461 mm in the model) and on direction between February and March, when the gauge rises from 49.3 to 63.7 mm and the model falls from 59 to 52 mm⁵⁶. Plan around the range, “roughly 49 to 82 mm a month from January to April and 202 to 461 mm from June to October”, and attribute each number to its column.

PAGASA’s Roxas City extremes sheet shows how far one day can sit from a monthly normal: 370.2 mm on 1 January 1916, 241.0 mm on 28 October 2022 and 172.0 mm on 11 April 2022⁸.

Each page below repeats its month’s row from the table with the neighbouring months, then covers sea and wind, dated events and arrivals reports.

• Boracay in January: 72.1 mm at the Roxas City gauge, 82 mm modelled; the coolest month in the table.
• Boracay in February: 49.3 mm at the gauge, the lowest of the twelve; 59 mm modelled.
• Boracay in March: 63.7 mm at the gauge, 52 mm modelled, the lowest model value; Holy Week falls in March in 2027.
• Boracay in April: 69.9 mm at the gauge, 57 mm modelled; mean maximum 31.7 C.
• Boracay in May: 144.7 mm at the gauge, 225 modelled; the warmest row, with a 32.6 C mean maximum.
• Boracay in June: 259.0 mm at the gauge, 371 modelled.
• Boracay in July: 253.4 mm at the gauge, 461 modelled, the wettest model month.
• Boracay in August: 202.1 mm at the gauge, 388 modelled; humidity 85%.
• Boracay in September: 213.5 mm at the gauge, 382 modelled.
• Boracay in October: 304.9 mm at the gauge, the wettest gauge month; 341 modelled.
• Boracay in November: 239.4 mm at the gauge, 208 modelled.
• Boracay in December: 171.3 mm at the gauge, 207 modelled; humidity 85%.

The weather that most changes a plan is not the monthly rainfall. It is a storm signal that stops the boats. In the cases found, Signal No. 1 meant limited crossings and Signal No. 2 meant none.

The Coast Guard decides on the day. The Ports Authority notice explained that when the Coast Guard issues a no-sail policy, trips are cancelled automatically because ships are not allowed to sail⁹. The sailing rule in force in 2026 could not be confirmed, so this page gives no signal-by-signal threshold. The full account is in Typhoons and cancelled boats, and the crossing itself is in Getting to Boracay.

Dated arrivals reports, not the weather, are what mark the busy periods.

The Labor Day weekend and the 2019 “Laboracay” peak, which reached 14,000 a day, are covered with the year-by-year dates in Boracay peak dates for 2026 and 2027¹⁶.

Two seasonal hazards have their own pages: green algae on White Beach and jellyfish. If you are choosing between islands, the comparisons are Boracay or Palawan, Boracay or Siargao and Boracay or Bali.