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.

May 2, 2023: This is what I was worried about. As of 8 a.m., visibility at the airport was down to 2000 meters (just over a mile). At 9 a.m. it was back up to 4000 meters. Yesterday it was 8000 meters much of the day. When flights were being cancelled it was down to 1000 meters.

The fire map shows fewer fires than before the weekend, but still some intense fires toward the coastline of Gracias a Dios Department, to our southeast where much of our smoke comes from. Over the next few days winds will be mostly from the east, but occasionally shift to the northeast or southeast. Northeast winds are better; southeast winds are bad because they bring smoke. There is a small chance for rain on the mainland the next few days and basically no chance of rain for us. We will have varying degrees of smoke for the next few days. Today and tomorrow we will have moderate winds 10-15 mph and 3 foot seas during the day and 20-25 mph winds and 4 foot seas at night. Thursday and Friday the east winds will be even stronger, before getting back about where we are now for the weekend. We’re still hoping for some rain in a week and a half. Have a great Tuesday!

May 1, 2023: Good morning Bay Islands. No rain last night on the island and the big winner yesterday was West Bay with over half an inch. Winds got dead calm overnight and seas are 1-2 feet. We have high clouds this morning, but should stay dry. Winds will come back this afternoon and evening from the northeast at 10 mph. Tomorrow winds will turn more to the east and by nightfall should be up to 20-25 mph with seas around 3 feet. The rest of the week looks dry and breezy.
A big question is whether the smoke will return. It is hard to tell how much rain fell in northeast Honduras with poor radar coverage and no reporting stations, but my guess is not much. Unlike us, they will have small chances of rain this week, but as the wind turns back to the east watch for signs of returning smoke.
The longrange forecast is trying to give us rain chances around the middle of May. Low tides are 12:04 p.m. and 12:28 a.m. Have a great week!

April 30, 2023: Good morning Bay Islands. The good news is that visibility at the airport is 5000 meters (3 miles) this morning, much better than 1000 meters (about half a mile) yesterday. Winds are from the west at 10 mph and seas are 3-4 feet mostly on the north and west sides.

The video here shows the rain coming down out of Belize last night. Sadly, most of the rain fell between San Pedro and La Ceiba, not where we really need it, toward Trujillo and to the east of there. The reporting station in Utila seems to getting a shower at 7:45 a.m. as I am writing, giving them .14 of an inch. Locations on Roatan either got no measurable rain or .01, but we will have a chance of a shower through today. Winds will remain from the west at 15-20 mph and seas will be 3-4 feet especially north and west sides. We will have a decent chance of rain tonight with winds from the northeast at 5-10 mph and seas at 2 feet. Tuesday will be partly cloudy with a small chance of a morning shower and light winds turning back to the east. Starting Tuesday night we get strong east winds, high clouds and little to no chance of rain. Let’s hope that by then the northeast of the mainland has gotten enough rain to knock down the fires. Low tides are 11:41 a.m. and 11:57 p.m. Have a great Sunday!