BicycleMonkey
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My wife and I are headed to Grand Cayman from August 2-9. Since neither one of us have ever been there, if we go on these dates, will we most likely avoid a hurricane?
Grand Cayman Hurricanes
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sharky60
Contributor
I agree, there's no way to predict a hurricane, June thru October is the hurricane season for the Caribbean and going anywhere down there can be a roll of the dice.
hurricanes have a seasonal 'pattern', check some of the weather websites and see if you can find out how may have come through there over the past 100 years of if they give a likleyhood percentage of hurricane activity during the month of August for Grand Cayman.
for instance, we are going to Cozumel the first week in September and research shows that hurricanes don't 'usually' form in that area of the Carribean that late in the season.
Really, i wouldn't lose any sleep over it, chances are you'll have a great vacation and the weather will be great.
God Bless,
hurricanes have a seasonal 'pattern', check some of the weather websites and see if you can find out how may have come through there over the past 100 years of if they give a likleyhood percentage of hurricane activity during the month of August for Grand Cayman.
for instance, we are going to Cozumel the first week in September and research shows that hurricanes don't 'usually' form in that area of the Carribean that late in the season.
Really, i wouldn't lose any sleep over it, chances are you'll have a great vacation and the weather will be great.
God Bless,
Most hurricanes begin as tropical depressions off the western edge of the Sahara, then move slowly westward through the Atlantic. Most of these low pressure fronts never develop into anything, but during hurricane season all of them are tracked very closely. The westward paths taken are generally just a few degrees north of the equator. As the storms approach the western hemisphere, there is an interesting seasonal pattern you can see by studying the paths taken by previous hurricanes. The early season hurricanes tend to break north earlier than the later season hurricanes. Storms in July and August are likely to go north before they get to Puerto Rico, whereas the later season hurricanes are more likely to hug the southern latitutes until they get past Puerto Rico and Hispanola before they break northwards. I remember from the 7 years I lived in south Florida that the peak probability time of year there was late August and early September. In contrast, our peak probability period in the Cayman Islands is more like October.
These are just generalities, and there have been plenty of exceptions. But I have seen plots on the web which show the paths taken by all recorded Atlantic hurricanes, and the consistency is really remarkable.
One of the major exceptions to all of this are the hurricanes which start in the Caribbean. I don't think there have been any monster hurricanes which began this way, but the ones which start in the Caribbean can still do a lot of damage. I rode out Hurricane Lenny on Little Cayman when it started literally over my head in 1999, then endured a brush by Hurricane Michelle a couple of years later. In fact, it was just this past spring that I finished picking up the last of the beach trash from Michelle and burned it. Both of those storms were October storms.
Bottom line: the probability of a hurricane in Grand Cayman before mid-September is really very low, and you almost always can track any potential storm for a week or more before it could ever make landfall on you. On the other hand, October is often pretty miserable. All but one of the resorts on Little Cayman shuts down for the month of October. The nominal excuse is to perform annual maintenance, but weather and typically low attendance rates are also factors.
These are just generalities, and there have been plenty of exceptions. But I have seen plots on the web which show the paths taken by all recorded Atlantic hurricanes, and the consistency is really remarkable.
One of the major exceptions to all of this are the hurricanes which start in the Caribbean. I don't think there have been any monster hurricanes which began this way, but the ones which start in the Caribbean can still do a lot of damage. I rode out Hurricane Lenny on Little Cayman when it started literally over my head in 1999, then endured a brush by Hurricane Michelle a couple of years later. In fact, it was just this past spring that I finished picking up the last of the beach trash from Michelle and burned it. Both of those storms were October storms.
Bottom line: the probability of a hurricane in Grand Cayman before mid-September is really very low, and you almost always can track any potential storm for a week or more before it could ever make landfall on you. On the other hand, October is often pretty miserable. All but one of the resorts on Little Cayman shuts down for the month of October. The nominal excuse is to perform annual maintenance, but weather and typically low attendance rates are also factors.
Hank49
Contributor
BicycleMonkey:
You're going to be there for a week. Hurricanes pass by in less than a day. (except for Kieth, when it stood of San Pedro, Belize for three days) The only bad thing would be if it hits the day you're supposed to leave and you would be STUCK there. bummer. And hurricanes are exciting, to say the least.
ShakaZulu
Contributor
That's why I prefer earth quakes, they last for a couple of seconds. My Turks & Caicos trip was blown out for 4 out of the 7 days.
Hank49
Contributor
zf2nt:
Didn't Mitch form in the Caribbean? I know it sat just off Belize for a few days before dipping south. And in 2000 Kieth formed right off the south of the Yucatan, just north of San Pedro. It was a tropical depression on Saturday morning and a category 4 hurricane Sunday morning. And in October 2001 Iris formed right off shore and hit Placencia hard. Here in Belize the bad ones are the ones that form near here. You're right. The ones that travel across the Atlantic turn north most of the time. Hank
Turtle Gal
Contributor
My family and I have been to Grand Cayman in the July and August months we only seen maybe 5 min of rain last year in Aug.Go and Have a great time!! Turtle galBicycleMonkey:
Yes, indeed it did. See http://www.osei.noaa.gov/mitch.html for the story of Mitch. That was one big mutha storm! It never got within a couple of hundred miles of Little Cayman, yet we had 30' waves breaking ashore. It wiped out every single dock and pier on the south side of the island. I had just received the flat racks full of lumber before Mitch arrived, and was still in the process of unloading them when things got ugly. Those waves took my neat piles of lumber and scattered them around like toothpicks! I had been through hurricanes before (David, 1979), but never anything like this one. If we had taken a direct hit, there's no way I would be around today to tell the tale. I understand it scoured Swan Island (about the same size and topography as Little Cayman) down to bare rock and nothing there survived. Ugly!Hank49:
Hank49
Contributor
zf2nt:
Fortunately for our Caymen bound couple, the Caribbean formed storms seem to come later in the year. Mitch, Kieth and Iris were all after mid Sept to late Oct if I recall. National Geographic had an article not long lafter Mitch claiming it was "the storm of the century".
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