I hate to say it, but it’s something we should chat about – our annual dreaded storm season. A tropical wave is forecasted to pass by St. John this week. This is just going to be a rain event, but it made me realize that we should probably do a quick weather forecast recap. So here are the best ways, in my opinion, to keep an eye on the weather in St. John.
First and foremost, you can check out the webcams if you want to see exactly what is happening on St. John in real time. St. John has more than a dozen webcams positioned around the island. There are several at businesses like The Beach Bar and The Windmill Bar. You can check out the ferry dock area by viewing St. John Spice’s Spice Cam or even one that’s positioned on the top of Grande Bay Resort. There are a bunch of villas and condos that have webcams too, like Seredip in Cruz Bay and Villa Circe out in Coral Bay. You can see all of these webcams and more at www.explorestj.com/webcams.
The two apps/websites I swear by are Wunderground and Windy. Wunderground seems to be the most accurate weather forecast app that I have found since moving here over a decade ago. Windy is unbelievable helpful, because it tells you what the current winds are and the wind direction, which is super helpful when planning beach days. But it also allows you to scroll ahead and see what the forecast is for the upcoming days and week. I like to use windy when we have a tropical wave forming, for example. It allows me to look ahead to see if it is forecasted to turn into something I feel we need to keep an eye on.
Now what exactly should you keep an eye on? Africa. Lots of hurricanes and tropical storms begin as systems over near the west coast of Africa. I check out my Living Earth app frequently during this time of year to see if there is anything brewing out there, It’s another very helpful app.
A great website to watch is spaghettimodels.com and myfoxhurricane.com. Both have dozens of radars, forecasts and, of course, the spaghetti models when we have a system to watch. Myfoxhurricane.com also has a page that shows the Saharan dust forecast. This is dust that lifts up from Africa, crosses the Atlantic and clouds up our skies. It’s a very dry air mass, so it prevents hurricanes from forming due to the lack of moisture in the atmosphere. It’s something that I very much welcome this time of year. You can check out that page here.
There are lots of other sites and social media pages that focus on our weather, but these are the ones that I check out the most. Now fingers crossed that we don’t have a reason to view them!
That’s it for today, folks. Have a great one!
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