Island Paradise Day 20

I have been a lover of weather ever since I learned to fly airplanes when I was 18. A big part of flying is meteorology and I guess that piqued my interest. From then on I loved learning about weather, following weather, watching weather, and chasing weather. The more wicked the weather, the better I like it!

While I am moderately knowledgeable about tornadoes (like the one on the left I took a picture of) and super cell storms that develop in Canada and the United States, I cannot say I have really followed Caribbean weather patterns much. To me, it has always just been “tropical” which is always better than cold. What I am learning is that just like back home, there are changes in weather: good days and bad days. The interesting part is that what might be considered a “bad weather day” while on vacation, is more often than not a good day for those that live here.

For example, yesterday was sunny and hot and there was no wind, so the water was calm as a lake. Perfect, right? Well, yes, if you are in a pool with a swim up bar drinking mojitos. For us, last night was almost unbearably hot. The water was calm because there was no breeze, but that meant there were tons of sand fleas finding their way into our house, up our pant legs, and dining on our “filets.” Filets are the soft flabby part under your arm – apparently quite a delicacy for sand fleas. Well today the easterly winds began to blow again and while that made the water rough and wavy - not great for snorkeling - it finally blew away the sand fleas, and we can open our windows and get some air in here. We are going on a full seven months in the tropics, so are beginning to appreciate other types of weather besides calm, sunny, and hot.

Yesterday we watched our first thunderstorm move over the mainland. There was lots of cloud to cloud lightning, and the palm trees looked amazing all back lit by the light show. And in between the lightening, there were amazing flashes from an abundance of fireflies. The forecast is for thunderstorms again tonight, so once again we will put away the Netflix and enjoy the show outside. I hope, like last night, it does not rain, as we are hoping to head to town tomorrow with the neighbours to see some live music at a favorite expat hang out. If it rains, the back road will be too muddy to get in to town, and if this wind keeps up, it will be too rough for a water taxi.

I have figured out why Cooper the water taxi guy (pictured below) goes into town at 8 am and back at 11 am. At first I just thought it was bad business – but having now studied the data on the wind finder website, I see that at this time of year there is limited wind between 8 and 11, before and after which wind speed picks up creating big swells, making it just too wavy to safely travel to town.