Those swirling lines and triangular symbols on a weather map are a language. Once you can read it, a single chart tells …
Sharing your station’s data to networks like Weather Underground and the Ambient network is free, easy, and turns your h…
Measuring air temperature accurately is far harder than it looks, and most home stations get it wrong for one avoidable …
Fog is simply a cloud at ground level, but the different ways it forms explain why some mornings are socked in and other…
A heat dome can lock a region into days of dangerous, record-breaking heat. The mechanism behind it is a particular trap…
La Niña reshuffles weather patterns across the globe in broadly predictable ways. Here’s what the pattern is, and the ki…
Bridgetown, the capital of Barbados, sits on the southwest coast of the island in the eastern Caribbean, on a low coastal plain at approximately 13.10°N, 59.61°W. It has a tropical climate (Köppen Aw) — hot and humid year-round, cooled by the steady northeast trade winds — with the year divided not into hot and cold but into a drier season and a wetter season. Its exposed Atlantic-facing position keeps it breezy and its temperatures remarkably steady.
There is no summer in the temperate sense: temperatures barely change, with daytime highs around 30–31°C all year and warm nights near 24–25°C, tempered by the constant trade winds. The wet season, from June to November, is hotter-feeling and more humid, with frequent afternoon showers and thunderstorms, and it coincides with the Atlantic hurricane season, though Barbados's easterly position means direct hits are relatively infrequent.
There is no true winter, but the dry season from December to May is the most pleasant time, with slightly lower humidity, plenty of sunshine, steady cooling trade winds and little rain. Temperatures remain warm and steady, and this bright, breezy, drier stretch — the peak tourist season — is comfortably the best time to visit.
Bridgetown receives around 1,250–1,400 mm of rain a year, concentrated in the wet season from June to November — with a peak around October and November — while the dry season from January to April sees much less; even the wettest months bring sunshine between the showers. Live rainfall, humidity, and pressure readings for the city are shown in the panels above.
The northeast trade winds are the defining feature of Bridgetown's weather, blowing almost constantly to keep the tropical heat comfortable and the air fresh. Lying at the far eastern edge of the Caribbean, Barbados sits slightly outside the main hurricane track, so while the wet season carries a real cyclone risk from June to November, direct strikes are less frequent than on islands further west.
To follow any single measurement in Bridgetown more closely, use our live instruments: the online barometer for atmospheric pressure, the thermometer for temperature, the hygrometer for humidity, the anemometer for wind speed, the wind vane for wind direction, and the rain gauge for rainfall.