Roatán Weather by Month: What 30 Years of Data Actually Says

Hi, it's Josh. I need to confess something before we start: I am a huge weather nerd. Pamela has learned to live with it. And if you spend any time in Roatán travel groups, you'll see the same question over and over, in a hundred variations: "What's the weather like the second week of April?" People genuinely want to know -- and the answers they get are usually a shrug, a screenshot of a 14-day forecast that will be wrong by Tuesday, or "it's the Caribbean, it's nice."

So we did what nobody in the comments section does: we pulled every single day of satellite-measured weather since January 1995 for our exact coordinates in West Bay -- 11,323 days of rainfall, temperature, humidity, and wind, plus a decade of daily sea-surface temperatures -- and turned it into the guide below. Real numbers, real charts, and then the part no dataset can give you: what it actually feels like to stand in it.

Because here's the thing about island weather culture you should know up front. On Roatán, the complete local forecast consists of two phrases: "Hey, it's raining" and, roughly twenty minutes later, "Well, the sun's out." That's it. That's the whole broadcast. The data below explains why that system works.

How Much It Actually Rains, Month by Month

Here is the whole year in one picture. This is the average monthly rainfall at West Bay across three decades:

The shape tells the story. From February through April the island is genuinely dry -- April bottoms out at about 2 inches for the entire month, which is less rain than Houston gets in an average week of spring. June flips the switch into the green season, July through September hold steady around 8 inches, and then October and November do the heavy lifting with over 12 inches each. January is the wet season's long goodbye: still showery (call it a wet 7 inches), but trending drier by the week.

One honest caveat, because averages are a promise of pattern, not a promise about your week: the spread between years is real. The driest October in our dataset delivered 5 inches; the wettest (2008) delivered nearly 30. That's the gamble of shoulder-season travel -- which is also exactly why it's cheaper. For how that trade-off plays against prices and crowds, our month-by-month guide to visiting covers the whole calendar.

"Rain Days" Are a Lie (Sort Of)

This is my favorite chart in this post, and it's the one that debunks almost every scary weather table on the internet. Climate sites will tell you June has 27 rain days. Technically true! The satellite counts every squall that drifts across the water, including the ones that pass in fifteen minutes while you're ordering a second Monkey La La. What that number doesn't tell you is how many days the rain actually rearranges your plans. So we counted both:

Look at the gap between the teal and pink bars. June's "27 rain days" collapse to about 6 days that matter. April averages 0.8 heavy-rain days -- not per week, per month. Even October, the wettest month of the year, gives you roughly 10 days where rain genuinely intrudes, which means two out of every three October days your snorkel plans are perfectly safe.

And here's what a green-season "rain day" actually looks like from our porch: the morning is gorgeous. Early afternoon, a dark line forms over the water and you can literally watch it march toward the beach -- it's the best free show on the island. Everyone shuffles under a palapa, it absolutely dumps for twenty to forty minutes, and then it's gone. Steam rises off the sand, the sun comes back out, and the evening is spectacular. Nobody opens a weather app at any point in this process. "Hey, it's raining." … "Well, the sun's out."

Temperature: The Flattest Line in Weather

If you've only lived in places with actual seasons, Roatán's temperature chart will look broken. It isn't. This is just what living beside an enormous thermostat does:

The air's daily highs run from about 79°F in January to 85°F at the September peak, measured over the water; on the sand on a summer afternoon, expect the upper 80s. Nights barely drop -- this is a marine climate, and the sea won't allow drama in either direction. The hottest single reading in three decades of data is 89.5°F. That's the ceiling. Thirty years, and the weather never once hit 90 over the water.

Now the statistic I tell every guest who asks whether to pack a jacket: the coldest night recorded in 11,323 consecutive days of data is 71.2°F, one March night back in 1996. Our thirty-year record low is your average June evening. When a winter "norther" blows through and it drops to 77 with a breeze, you will see islanders in hoodies, genuinely suffering. It's adorable. Pack a light layer for breezy boat rides and over-air-conditioned restaurants, and that's it -- the full packing list is here.

Humidity holds between 79 and 83% all year -- it's the tropics, there's no dry-air month coming to save you -- but the trade winds do the work that air conditioning does elsewhere. In the shade with the breeze on, 84°F here feels better than 78°F in a still city.

The Sea: The Best Part of the Whole Dataset

The water off West Bay moves between 81°F in late winter and 87°F in September. That's the entire annual range. There is no day of the year when you need a wetsuit to snorkel -- a rash guard for sun protection is the only "gear" question, though divers doing multiple long dives often like a shorty in the winter months. The reef sits a short swim off the beach and it does not close for any season; if you're planning around it, here's where we send our guests first.

A detail from the wind data that surprises people: September and October have the calmest winds of the year (averaging under 13 mph, versus 15–16 in spring). Calm wind means flat, glassy water -- so the "risky" shoulder months quietly serve up some of the most beautiful snorkeling mornings of the year, in between their famous showers. Weather nerds know. Now you do too.

Wind, Clouds, and the Famous "Norther"

The trade winds blow steadily out of the east at 13–16 mph, peaking March through July and bottoming out in early fall. They're the island's climate control, and after a week here the sound of them in the palms becomes the thing you miss most when you leave.

Winter (December through February) occasionally brings a "norther" -- a cold front that sneaks down from the Gulf, swings the wind around to the north, chops up the water for a day or three, and drops the temperature into the high 70s. This is the island's entire version of winter. The west-facing beaches (that's us) can get surprisingly surfy for a day; dive shops shuffle to the protected south side; islanders wear the aforementioned hoodies. Then the trades reassert themselves and the Caribbean goes back to behaving like a postcard.

Cloud cover follows the rain: February through April average under 40% cloud -- week after week of high blue skies -- while June and October run closer to 70%, which in practice means big dramatic cloudscapes and the best sunsets of the year, not gray gloom. This matters for photographers: dry season gives you clean light, green season gives you interesting light.

The Famous "Second Week of April" Question

This post exists because of one question that appears in every Roatán Facebook group, every year, without fail. So let's answer it properly, with 31 Aprils of daily data for April 8–14 specifically:

• 71% of those days were completely dry. Not "mostly dry" -- zero measurable rain.
• Heavy rain fell on 5% of them -- about one day in twenty.
• In 22 of the last 31 years, the entire week totaled under half an inch. In 2011 it totaled exactly 0.00".
• The worst second-week-of-April in three decades (2025) managed 3.4 inches spread across the whole week -- a couple of interrupted afternoons, not a lost vacation.
• Average high: 81°F over the water, mid-80s on the sand. Sea: 82°F.

So, to the annual Facebook asker, from a weather nerd with the receipts: the second week of April is one of the statistically safest beach weeks anywhere in the Caribbean. Pack sunscreen, not an umbrella. And the same math holds for essentially any week from mid-February through early May.

Hurricanes: The Honest Short Version

Roatán sits at 16° north -- south of the main Atlantic hurricane track -- and direct hits are genuinely rare: on the order of once every two decades, with Mitch (1998) and the Eta/Iota pair (November 2020) the two events islanders actually talk about. Here's what that looks like in our dataset: out of 11,323 days, exactly one produced hurricane-scale rainfall -- November 4, 2020, when Eta parked nearby and dropped 8.7 inches. One day. Thirty years.

That's the statistical reality, but fall travelers should still buy trip insurance and keep an eye on the forecast -- we wrote a full, honest breakdown in our hurricane season guide, including what actually happens on the island when a storm passes within a few hundred miles (short answer: a gray, breezy day or two and some dramatic clouds).

Extremes & Records: Nerd Candy

Every number below comes from the same 30-year daily record. Frame these for the trivia round:

• Wettest single day: 8.7 inches -- November 4, 2020, Hurricane Eta.
• Hottest reading: 89.5°F (October 2023). The sea has never let it reach 90.
• Coldest night: 71.2°F (March 11, 1996). That's the record. Low.
• Longest dry streak: 50 consecutive days without measurable rain, spring 2020.
• Biggest October mood swing: 5.2 inches in 1996 vs. 29.9 inches in 2008 -- same month, different decade, different planet.
• Air temperature's total annual range: about 6 degrees. Some cities do that before lunch.

The Month-by-Month Weather Table

Every month at a glance -- these are the 30-year averages behind the charts above. "Heavy rain days" are days over 0.4 inches, the ones that can actually change your plans. Highlighted rows are the statistically driest stretch of the year.

Air highs are measured over the water; beach afternoons typically run 2–4°F warmer. Details below.

How We Built This (For Fellow Weather Nerds)

The daily weather record is NASA's POWER dataset -- satellite-based reanalysis data for our coordinates (16.30°N, 86.59°W), every day from January 1, 1995 through 2025: 11,323 days of rainfall, temperature, humidity, and wind. Sea-surface temperatures come from the Copernicus marine reanalysis (2015–2025, daily). Cloud cover is NASA's 22-year climatology for the same grid cell.

Two honest footnotes. First, our grid cell sits mostly over water, which is what you want for sea temps and rainfall but reads a touch cool for afternoon land temperatures -- standing on the sand at 2pm in August, add a few degrees to the chart. Second, our thresholds: a "measurable rain" day is anything over 0.04 inches (the satellite counts every passing squall), and a "heavy rain" day -- the kind that might actually reshuffle your afternoon -- is over 0.4 inches. Everything is averaged across the full record and rounded; nothing is massaged. If you want to argue about reanalysis skill over the Bay Islands, genuinely, WhatsApp me -- Pamela will be thrilled it's you and not her.

Want the real-time version of this post? WhatsApp us and ask what the weather's doing. We'll walk out to the porch and tell you exactly what the sky looks like right now. Zero satellites involved.