Why millions of Vietnamese ignore official weather warnings - and turn to these guys instead

HANOI – Mr Tran Cong Nam, 55, a tour boat owner in Quang Tri province in central Vietnam, usually starts his days with a quick read of local weather forecasts on Facebook.

One of the pages he visits most often is that of Dr Huy Nguyen, a university lecturer in Hanoi and well-known climate change scientist who has been providing weather and disaster predictions for 15 years.

In a social media post on Feb 8, Dr Huy, widely known as The Weather Huy, urged farmers in central areas to quickly protect their flowers and plants as strong winds and rain were expected within 24 hours.

“We are so thankful for his weather forecast,” said Mr Nam. “The winds were particularly strong that day, and I also stayed on shore.”

Recently, Dr Huy, whose Facebook page has a massive following of 1.2 million people, was among the winners at the WeChoice Awards 2025, an annual event organised by leading local tech company VCCorp to honour inspiring people, stories and projects that positively impact the community.

He is one of a handful of independent, pro bono weathermen who have gained a solid reputation and public trust for their tireless, consistent contributions, such as doling out information on the temperature, giving wardrobe tips and issuing warnings about impending disasters.

The 47-year-old, whose real name is Nguyen Ngoc Huy, has a PhD in environmental studies and disaster risk management from Kyoto University. He began studying storms and other natural disasters in 2008 while in Japan, and continued after returning to Vietnam in 2010.

“The devastating Tohoku earthquake and tsunami in Japan in 2011 made me more aware of the importance of early disaster warning, so I started posting on Facebook (that year),” the weather expert told The Straits Times.

“My posts, however, were set to friends only and I didn’t have many followers.

“But things changed in 2017, when I publicly posted early warnings of Typhoon Damrey and people found them useful. My posts attracted a lot of attention, and the number of followers increased significantly as I gave predictions about the floods in 2020,” Dr Huy added.

A woman in Nha Trang on the central coast texted him to say that she and her family managed to evacuate from their home before the area was hit badly by Typhoon Damrey in 2017, as he had predicted, he recalled.

Public disaster warnings used to be scarce, not only in Vietnam but in other countries in the region too. And when they were issued, “the forecasts were very technical”, said the scientist.

“They showed the projected path of a typhoon, where it was heading, roughly,” he explained. “But ordinary people would not be able to tell how it would affect them. They needed a better assessment of the risks to be prepared.

“And that’s where I stepped in to give them disaster warnings that were simple to understand, as well as practical advice.”

People on the ground appreciated his efforts.

“In 2020, the doctor in charge of the obstetrics department at Hue Central Hospital sent me a thank-you message because, thanks to my early warnings, he was able to inform pregnant women registered to give birth at the hospital to come to the hospital before the flooding occurred,” he added.

Social responsibility

In a country with changeable weather and prone to natural disasters, useful information on the climate is very much sought after, and, of late, more independent weather forecasters have been making their mark on social media.

“We don’t do this because official weather forecasts are lacking,” said another forecaster on Facebook, who wishes to be known by his nickname Ad Dzu as he is not authorised to speak to the media in an official capacity.

“Although government agencies have improved a lot in recent years, they cannot work as fast as social media because official announcements still need to go through an approval procedure before being issued,” said Ad Dzu, a trained scientist in his 40s.

These pro bono weather forecasts are sometimes posted hours, or even days, ahead of the official predictions, and are generally quite accurate.

“The official weather reports also tend to be too complicated for ordinary folk, and not interactive enough,” he noted. These are usually delivered via government channels such as websites and news outlets, as well as on popular messaging platforms like Zalo.

The weather enthusiast has been posting weather forecasts, mainly for his home base around the Hanoi area, on Facebook since 2014. His Hanoi Weather page has garnered nearly 270,000 followers, who – according to the comments – love his chatty, informal style.

“Today and tomorrow morning are your last chance to show off your beautiful winter clothes because the weather is getting much warmer rapidly,” warned Ad Dzu. “Of course, you can still wear them later on, but if you suffer from the heat, don’t say I haven’t warned you!”

He first began weather forecasting “in order to share my knowledge to help people prepare and fight against misinformation”.

“But I soon found that timely and accurate weather forecasts are extremely useful for most people, so I am now taking it on as a social responsibility,” he told ST.

Still, not every prediction hits the mark, and Hanoi Weather is no exception.

The biggest difficulty for Ad Dzu is ”to balance between scientific precision and populist expression, as I want to speak to readers as a friend”.

“I am also vulnerable to criticism, sometimes quite harsh, from my followers,” he said, recounting a recent complaint by a Facebook follower.

“You said it would be clear and warm on New Year’s Eve but it was so chilly and I nearly got a cold. Calling yourself the Zhuge Liang of Weather?” wrote Lam Nguyen.

Zhuge Liang (181AD-234AD) was a renowned Chinese statesman and strategist who successfully predicted some of the enemy’s military moves.

Beware of hoaxes

For his part, Dr Huy said that one of the biggest challenges is “translating” data into warning information.

“Different forecasting models can produce significantly different results, so you need to combine local knowledge and personal experience in monitoring natural disasters,” he told ST.

“Another challenge is the line between warnings and misinformation, the language you use – you can’t be too general, but over-predicting can create panic.”

Weather enthusiasts like Ad Dzu use a mix of hardware and digital tools to monitor conditions and share data. These include personal weather stations, the core of the set-up, which typically includes sensors for temperature, humidity and rainfall.

There are also specialised sensors like wind vanes to measure wind speed and direction, and barometers to track air pressure changes, which are key for identifying approaching storms. In addition, weather hobbyists rely on high-resolution data apps that offer more detail than standard consumer weather apps.

“Anybody with a Windy app can now become a forecaster,” Ad Dzu said, referring to a popular weather forecasting app. “But people need to be aware of hoaxes because they do more harm than good.”

While the Vietnamese government retains tight oversight of digital content, there has been no marked response to the plethora of weather-related posts on social media.

Yet there remain loopholes in weather forecasting and people, more than ever, “need correct, timely warnings from reputable sources”, according to Ad Dzu.

The demand for quality weather forecasting is there, agrees another independent forecaster who posts about weather conditions in Hanoi using the pseudonym Weatherdude. After his day job as a humanities teacher at Hanoi International School, he shares weather and culture tips in English with the city’s residents.

The 51-year-old from Canada runs a makeshift weather station on the rooftop of his house. He told ST that he wanted “to connect with my readers, focus on how weather affects people’s living and, at the same time, motivate children’s interest in the environment”.

“I see my weather bulletins as not only a hobby but also a community service,” said Weatherdude, who has built up a following of 23,000 on Facebook over the past 12 years online.

It’s a good thing that the government is paying more attention to weather forecasting, he said, noting the growing number of official bulletins and reports across all channels, with more detailed programmes on TV using sophisticated graphics and images.

“But they need new forecast models and more training for staff so they have a specialist knowledge of the content, ” added the former conservationist who studies storms as a hobby.

Will AI rain on weather forecasters’ parade?

The science of weather forecasting is developing rapidly and soon the application of AI may have a profound impact on weather forecasting, according to weather enthusiasts.

“My job-cum-hobby may become obsolete in two years,” quipped Weatherdude.

Artificial intelligence may well replace most of his work in the future, Dr Huy said.

“Currently, meteorological forecasting already uses AI models and the forecast results are relatively accurate,” he noted. “I believe these models will improve significantly as more open data sources become available and they will self-adjust through accumulated historical data.

“Similarly, in disaster warning, AI has already been widely utilised and when sufficient data sources are available, I believe the models will run automatically and the role of humans will decrease.”

But Ad Dzu is more optimistic, saying that while AI could be a very useful tool, he doesn’t see it replacing humans in weather and disaster forecasting because it is still “not human enough”.

“It doesn’t fully understand human psychology, nor does it have a human understanding of events,” he explained.

“In the future, we will collaborate with AI rather than be replaced,” he concluded.