Weather now across the Caribbean

Dry season and rainy season

The Mexican Caribbean is warm all year, and the sea stays at about 26 °C (79 °F) in winter and 29 °C (84 °F) in summer. From about December to April it is the dry season, with sunny days, cooler nights and the least rain, and February to April are usually the driest months. The rains pick up from May or June, and September and October are the wettest months of the year. Rain here usually comes in short, heavy showers, often in the afternoon, with sun before and after.

Nortes, hurricanes and sargassum

In winter, cold fronts from the north, called nortes, can bring a few days of strong wind, rough seas and cooler air; they also stir up the usually calm water of Cancun's bay. The Atlantic hurricane season runs from June to November, and the coast is most at risk from August to October. For official warnings, follow Mexico's National Weather Service and the US National Hurricane Center.

From spring to autumn, sargassum seaweed can wash up on the beaches that face the open sea. It comes and goes with the wind and the currents and can cover one beach while the next one stays clear, so the cams are the best way to see how a beach looks today. The bay side of Cancun, Isla Mujeres's Playa Norte and the west coast of Cozumel usually get much less of it, and Bacalar, a freshwater lagoon inland, none at all.

Puerto Rico's weather

Puerto Rico shares the warm, steady climate of the region, but its mountains split it in two. The trade winds blow from the east and northeast, so the north coast, San Juan included, and the slopes of El Yunque catch most of the rain, while the south and southwest, around Guánica and Lajas, lie in a rain shadow and are among the driest places on the island. From November to March the north coast also gets the big swells of the North Atlantic. For official forecasts and hurricane warnings, follow the US National Weather Service in San Juan.

Jamaica's weather

Jamaica is just as warm, and the trade winds that cool the north coast at Montego Bay and Ocho Rios also bring it most of its rain, which usually peaks in May and October. Kingston, on the south coast in the lee of the Blue Mountains, is noticeably drier, although afternoon storms often build over the mountains behind it. For official forecasts and hurricane warnings, follow the Meteorological Service of Jamaica.

The weather in the Dutch islands

Curaçao and Aruba are among the driest islands in the Caribbean, with scrub and cactus instead of rainforest, and they lie south of the usual hurricane tracks. The trade wind blows from the east almost every day, and what rain they get falls mostly from October to January. St Maarten, further north, has the wetter climate of the Leeward Islands and lies right on the hurricane tracks, so for it the June to November season matters as much as for Puerto Rico.

The Virgin Islands, the Cayman Islands and Anguilla

The Virgin Islands and Anguilla share the trade-wind climate of the north-eastern Caribbean: warm all year, breezy, with short showers and the wettest weather from late summer to autumn. The Cayman Islands, further west, are flat, with the calmest seas on the west coast and the wettest months in September and October. All three are exposed to hurricanes in the season; Bonaire, like Curaçao and Aruba, lies south of them.

The French islands and Antigua

St Barts, Antigua, Guadeloupe and Martinique lie along the arc of the Lesser Antilles, in the path of the trade wind. St Barts and Antigua are small and dry, with little rain for most of the year; Guadeloupe and Martinique are high and green, so their mountains catch the clouds and the rain while their sheltered western coasts stay sunnier. All of them are exposed to hurricanes from June to November. Mustique, in the Grenadines further south, shares the dry, breezy weather of the small islands.

The Dominican Republic

The north coast of the Dominican Republic, at Cabarete, faces the Atlantic and the trade wind: mornings are often calm and the wind builds through the afternoon, which is what draws the kitesurfers. On this coast the rains are heaviest from about November to January, brought by cold fronts and the trade wind, and June to September are the driest months. In the east and south-east, at Punta Cana and Casa de Campo, the pattern is the usual one of the Caribbean: the driest months run from about December to April. The island lies on the path of the hurricanes from June to November.

Barbados, Saint Lucia, Trinidad and Tobago

Barbados, Saint Lucia, Trinidad and Tobago lie in the south-east of the Caribbean, in the path of the trade wind. Low, flat Barbados gets its showers in short bursts as they come in from the Atlantic; Saint Lucia's mountains catch the clouds and the rain while its west coast stays sunnier. Trinidad and Tobago, at the southern edge of the hurricane belt, have a dry season from about January to May and a rainy season from June to December; on the north coast of Trinidad, Maracas Beach faces the open sea, and its waves show how hard the wind is blowing.

The Bahamas, the Turks and Caicos, the Bay Islands and Belize

The Bahamas and the Turks and Caicos are low islands on the edge of the Atlantic, sunny and breezy most of the year. In winter, cold fronts from North America bring a few cooler, windy days at a time, more often in the northern Bahamas than in the south. Utila and Roatán, in Honduras, lie far to the west, where the rainy season runs from about October to January and winter northers can bring days of wind and rough sea. In the north of Belize, at Orchid Bay, the rains come from about June to November and the spring is dry and hot.

Weather data by MET Norway (CC BY 4.0).