Little Cayman, best time of year for diving

[chickmama]

The best time is now through Easter. June is beginning to get too humid & rainy. The water can never be described as not warm.

sorry i disagree with you. I have found the best time to be in June. you want to stay away from spring because there are still too many chances of a front coming through and messing up your diving. Early June is a great time but stay away from July and August since there is too good of a chance for a hurricane. We are going June 5th-12th which should be a pretty good time. Have been there in March and april and got messed up both times with fronts coming through with big waves. Was unable to do any diving or snorkeling. Kathy

 

[Alex777]

This chart will give readers an idea of the chances of encountering a hurricane or storm during each month of the year:

Hurricanes and Storms

 

[-hh]

This chart will give readers an idea of the chances of encountering a hurricane or storm during each month of the year:

Hurricanes and Storms

Fair enough, but the risk of a hurricane is merely one more factor to consider.

And while a hurricane looks huge on the weather maps, the actual portion of the storm that represents a significant risk to one's well-being is very small relative to the total storm and the size of the Sea. A big storm will have a 100 mile radius hazard area (~30,000 square miles), whereas the context is that the Caribbean Sea encompasses roughly 1 million square miles, plus the Gulf of Mexico is another 600,000 square miles, for a total of 1.6 million square miles, which means roughly a 2% coverage ... or a 98% chance of the storm (given that there is a storm) being "someplace else".

Which is why IMO the chart's statement of "likelihood of having your diving vacation in the Caribbean disrupted by a Hurricane or Tropical Storm at various times of the year" is a bit misleading. Sure, it shows relative risk vs. time, but it is all too easy to misread the chart in that its peak of 80 storms in 100 years sounds too much like "80% chance", which can only true if your dive vacation is occurring on every island in the Caribbean simultaneously.

This isn't to downplay hurricanes ... they're serious business, and close calls can be stressful. My point is merely that if one goes to the Caribbean in, say, September, you're not utterly "DOOMED" to be hit. Just take the Caymans as an example: to be sure, Ivan was a big nasty hit in 2004, but when before that was the last big nasty hit? IMO, it was Gilbert ... in 1988. YMMV, but only two big storms in the past 20 years doesn't sound like all that earth-shattering of a track record. And granted there have been some others that have passed through .. Mitch and Lily come to mind, but I was on-island in the eye of Lily on the Brac, and 48 hours she passed, we were back out diving in flat seas and honest 200ft visibility.


-hh

 

[Alex777]

Fair enough, but the risk of a hurricane is merely one more factor to consider.

And while a hurricane looks huge on the weather maps, the actual portion of the storm that represents a significant risk to one's well-being is very small relative to the total storm and the size of the Sea. A big storm will have a 100 mile radius hazard area (~30,000 square miles), whereas the context is that the Caribbean Sea encompasses roughly 1 million square miles, plus the Gulf of Mexico is another 600,000 square miles, for a total of 1.6 million square miles, which means roughly a 2% coverage ... or a 98% chance of the storm (given that there is a storm) being "someplace else".

Which is why IMO the chart's statement of "likelihood of having your diving vacation in the Caribbean disrupted by a Hurricane or Tropical Storm at various times of the year" is a bit misleading. Sure, it shows relative risk vs. time, but it is all too easy to misread the chart in that its peak of 80 storms in 100 years sounds too much like "80% chance", which can only true if your dive vacation is occurring on every island in the Caribbean simultaneously.

This isn't to downplay hurricanes ... they're serious business, and close calls can be stressful. My point is merely that if one goes to the Caribbean in, say, September, you're not utterly "DOOMED" to be hit. Just take the Caymans as an example: to be sure, Ivan was a big nasty hit in 2004, but when before that was the last big nasty hit? IMO, it was Gilbert ... in 1988. YMMV, but only two big storms in the past 20 years doesn't sound like all that earth-shattering of a track record. And granted there have been some others that have passed through .. Mitch and Lily come to mind, but I was on-island in the eye of Lily on the Brac, and 48 hours she passed, we were back out diving in flat seas and honest 200ft visibility.


-hh

I agree entirely. Perhaps I should add some of this to the web page in question.

 

[-hh]

I agree entirely. Perhaps I should add some of this to the web page in question.

Feel free to take what I wrote, as the whole topic of the risks from storms gets complex very fast, so it is an "easier said than done".

For example, the typical vacation is going to be a week, and storms move. As such, they cut a 'swath', which increases their effective 'risk' size. While this should make things worse, their paths has general patterns, so the risks aren't statistically randomized. For example, when there's a storm approaching, the Braccers monitor its Latitude until it hits 20N...and then they relax, because retrograde storms are rare.

And a TS isn't necessarily all that earth-shattering, unless it affects your airline flights - - and then this factor gets complicated if you need to worry about the storm risks at 2 locations instead of just one ... ie, Miami and Cayman, because that's where you have a connecting flight ... a storm at either location can mess up your travel plans.

In 19 years ... and a lot of trips at the September 'peak' ... we've had a few storms that got closely watched, but we've never had any travel problems (other than 9/11) and have really only been run over once (Lily), although we did get lucky and miss Ivan purely by dumb luck: I had a schedule conflict with a business trip, so we pushed back from Sept to Nov in 2004. Overall, I attribute part of this being that the hurricane tracks have patterns, and the Caymans aren't on the heavier-hit tracks, such as the one across Puerto Rico and up through the Bahamas.




-hh

 

[Damselfish]

The odds of a direct life-threatening island-destoying hit by the center of a storm at any given place are not that high any time. But the odds of a storm generally mucking up weather and somewhat interfering with flights, diving conditions, or at the very least your sunny weather or peace of mind, are certainly higher.