Phuket Weather

The heat is on again

I have written before about the fact the weather forecasts for Phuket tend to be a load of rubbish, incorrect, wrong. There are often predictions for thunderstorms, heavy rain, the kind of weather that can put people off. The standard meteorological symbol on Phuket forecasts for the whole low season is one that means "chance of a thunderstorm". But looks scary. After blogging the Phuket weather for nearly 5 years, and after living here for more than 10 years, the unavoidable truth is that you can't trust weather forecasts and you can't trust the weather! Can be beautiful in the middle of low season, and you can get nasty wet days in December which is supposed to be high season.

But this is February.. or at least it will be for another day. February is the driest month of the year (normally) and certainly has been dry this year. And yet, a couple of weeks ago (see the weather blog post comments from 14th Feb), someone was worried about upcoming weather as they'd seen some websites predicting heavy rain later in February. I posted again on the 21st and incredibly we did have some rain that day. My rain gauge measured 2mm... and since then there has been no rain.. oh wait, I think 17 drops fell one other day last week. It was a bit hazy and grey for a couple of days, but by the 25th it was all hot and sunny again. Do follow me on Twitter - I tend to post weather updates there, as well as links, news and unrelated nonsense.

A friend had turned up unexpectedly from Autralia last week and we had a BBQ at our house on Friday, where naturally I drank one too many beers and set myself up for some dehydration next day. You have to be careful in this weather, it's easy to get mild heat exhaustion. I spent a lot of time Saturday morning in the garden working and sweating, eased my thirst with a few cold ones.... got bright red shoulders. It was a hot hot day. We headed off to a little restaurant by the beach for dinner. I could feel that I had overdone the sun and the beer, so opted for ice tea and just a light plate of fried rice with prawns. By about 9pm after more rehydrating at home, I was feeling much better so drank a 6 pack of Chang instead of sleeping early, I turned on the rugby, 2 great games Wales v Italy and then England v France. The England game kicked off 5pm local time, meaning midnight here in Phuket.

That's February all but done for another year. March comes marching in next, we can expect more hot hot weather, maybe some rain too, but March is still very much dry season in Phuket. March and April are well known to be hot and dry, though when the heat builds you gotta have a thunderstorm now and then to cool off. See you in March!


The heat is on again  |  The Phuket Weather Blog

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