Good morning Bay Islands. We awake to 25 mph winds and seas 4-5 feet. Today will continue windy and tonight we will get even stronger winds, 30-36 mph, and seas at 6 feet (2 meters). Be careful out there on the waters. The good news is that the winds should calm a bit tomorrow. Afternoon winds will be around 15 mph and seas at 3 feet. Sunday night will get a bit windy again, but we will really start noticing things calm on Monday, with 10-15 mph winds and 2 foot (.6 meter) seas and then Tuesday and Wednesday 5-10 mph winds and 1-2 foot seas (.3 to .6 meters).

The map I’ve included is the US GFS computer prediction for rainfall for the week ahead. As you can see, there is a blue hole over the islands, giving us only a quarter to half an inch of rain. But that is a quarter to half an inch more than we’ve been getting. Our best chance of getting it is Monday night through Tuesday night. Let’s hope we get it. Low tides are 10:25 a.m. and 11 p.m. Have a great weekend!

May 12, 2023: Good morning, Bay Islands. We wake up to hazy skies and southeast winds 10-15 mph. The haze is Saharan dust mixed with clouds. You can see the brown color of the dust in the satellite map.

Today I’m going to say something I haven’t been able to say in awhile, and that is that I can’t guarantee it’s going to be totally dry today. The chance of rain this evening is VERY LOW and whatever rain anyone gets will pass quickly, but our chances are NOT ZERO the way they have been the last few weeks, probably more like 10 percent. We will remain windy and hazy through the weekend with a 10 percent chance of rain each day.

Our chances of rain go up on Monday and our winds and seas get calmer. Tuesday and Wednesday will be quite calm, calmer than we’ve seen in a couple of weeks. Monday night, Tuesday morning and Tuesday night will be our best chances of rain.

After that our rain chances go down, but they don’t go down to zero. I think we are going into a different weather pattern, more typical of June, where we have small nightly chances of seeing a shower. Low tides are 9:32 a.m. and 11 p.m. Have a great Friday!

Good morning, Bay Islands. We wake up with hazy clouds in the sky mixing with some Saharan dust and probably a little smoke, since the fires on the mainland are still going on and we have southeast winds this morning at 15-20 mph and seas 4-5 feet (1.3-1.6 meters). We will continue with windy, hazy conditions through the weekend. Our chances for rain this weekend are looking worse and worse, though I still think we may still see a lonely shower on radar somewhere this weekend. Monday through Wednesday remains our best chance to see a shower, especially during the night or early morning. After that we will have nightly 20 percent chances of rain. Low tide is 8:28 a.m. and 8:52 p.m. Have a great Thursday!

Good morning, Bay Islands! We are back in the strong easterly winds thorugh the weekend. Winds today will be 15-20 mph and seas at 3 feet (1 meter). Starting tonight nighttime winds will be 20-30 mph and seas around 6 feet (2 meters) and starting tomorrow daytime winds will be 17-25 mph and seas 4-5 feet (1.3-1.6 meters). Starting Saturday we will have small chances of showers, especially in the early morning hours. Our best chance of showers over the next week will be Tuesday morning into Wednesday morning. Small chances of morning showers stay around through the end of next week. Low tide is 7:34 p.m. Have a great Wednesday!

May 9, 2023: Good morning Bay Islands. We wake up with moderate winds and seas 15-20 mph and seas around 3 feet (1 meter). Today, tonight and tomorrow winds and seas will continue moderate, but tomorrow night into the weekend our trade winds will get stronger, getting up to 30-35 mph at night and seas up to 6 feet (2 meters).
We still have hopes of some scattered nighttime and morning showers starting Saturday. The chances will start off low, about 20 percent for the weekend, but they will get better toward Tuesday and Wednesday of next week. Another good thing that will happen is winds and seas will be quite calm next week. Low tide is 6:13 p.m. Have a great Tuesday!

May 8, 2023: Good morning, Bay Islands. We wake up to 15 mph winds and 3 foot seas. Winds and seas will be very moderate today and tonight, 10-15 mph and 2-3 foot seas during the day and 17-22 mph and 3 foot seas tonight. Low tide is 5 p.m.
Tomorrow will be a bit windier and Wednesday through the weekend will be quite windy with nighttime winds around 30 mph and seas 5-6 feet in the evenings, 4-5 feet during the day.
This weekend we start seeing very small chances of overnight and morning showers, perhaps 20 percent each day. That’s not much, but it’s better than what we’ve been getting. Toward the middle of next week those chose go up to maybe 50/50.

I’m posting the rainfall map of the US GFS model for the next two weeks. It predicts about an inch for us which isn’t much, but it’s better than nothing. Let’s hope we get it. Have a great week!

May 6, 2023: Good morning, Bay Islands. We should be just a little calmer today than yesterday with winds 12-18 mph during the day with 2-3 foot waves and 20-25 mph and 3-4 foot waves tonight. The next few days will be very similar with dry conditions. We’re still hoping that scattered rain chances get better next weekend and for the week after that. Have a great weekend!

May 5, 2023: Good morning Bay Islands. We wake up to winds 20-25 mph and seas around 4 feet. Skies are clear and there hasn’t been much air pollution thank goodness. Today and tonight will be windy, with wind getting up to 30-35 mph tonight with seas 4-5 feet. Tomorrow will be a LITTLE calmer, with daytime winds 15-20 mph and seas 2-3 feet and nighttime winds 22-27 mph and seas at 4 feet. The first part of next week will be much the same and we will continue dry with only occasional high, dry clouds.

The weather map I am including today gives us a little hope. The green is dry air in the upper atmosphere, and the red is moist air, the kind that brings us scattered showers. You will see that toward the end of next week we get moist air and it stays with us into the latter part of May. If this holds true it will mean daily chances of rain in that time period. Let’s hope so. Low tide is 2:17 p.m. Have a great Friday!

May 4, 2023: Good morning Bay Islands. A big question is whether this haze is clouds or smoke. The answer is that most of the stuff above us is clouds, but those clouds are not near the surface. If you are seeing grayed out hills or ships in the distance, that is poor air quality and probably smoke.

I saw a lot of that yesterday afternoon. I’m a bit confused as to why the airport is reporting 9999 meters (unlimited) visibility all day yesterday and this morning. That’s not what it seems like to me.

This morning we wake up to 15 mph winds and 3 foot waves. As the day moves along things will get even windier, until we get up to 30 mph winds tonight and 5-6 foot waves. Tomorrow will be much the same. Saturday winds will be 15-25 mph and seas at 4 feet. Aside from the smoky haze, the high clouds should clear out the next two days before coming back on Saturday.
The US GFS computer model is still wanting to give us scattered showers starting the end of next week and through that weekend, while other models are not as optimistic. We’ll keep an eye on it. Low tide is 1:38 p.m. Have a great Thursday.

No one got much rainfall last month. The most was 1.35 inches in West End and the least was .07 in Coral View, but lots of us got less than a tenth of an inch, including me on Jonesville Point. We will officially put .62 in the record books, from Sandy Bay’s total. Our average for April (our driest month of the year) is 1.47. We’ve been behind all of 2023, though. We are not a third of the way through the year and we’ve gotten only 13 percent of our average annual rainfall. Another way of saying that is that we normally have 21 inches through the first four months, and we’ve gotten about 11 inches. So we are about 10 inches in deficit for the year. May averages 2.63 inches, but last year we only got half an inch. There’s no rain in the forecast until the middle of the month. Let’s hope it turns out because our yards are gettting thirsty and mangos like some dryness to mature but getting a little rain at the end helps the ripen.