I lived in Phuket from 1999 to 2019 and started this weather blog in 2006 so I think I can say that I know the weather in Phuket. And ... it's unpredictable. Phuket weather is not as simple as "wet" / "dry" or "low season" / "high season". Yes, on
average you get less rain from November to April compared to May to October, but this does not mean you'll get NO rain in December, and it does not mean you'll get ALL rain in July. There are rainy days in high season, and there are beautiful sunny days in
low season. You can visit in August and have a week of sunshine, or you can be unlucky and get mostly wet, windy weather. The weather can be a bit random sometimes. And most of the weather forecasts online are, in my opinion, a bit useless.
What websites have good weather forecasts for Phuket? The sites I use most are
Windguru,
Windy.com and
Accuweather.
Windguru is more of a wind and wave forecast site, though it does have estimated rainfall. I have used this site for years - very useful for planning dive trips - on a boat trip we don't care too much about rain, but we do care about strong winds and high waves! Windy.com is a lovely site to play with, it shows a map which you can zoom in and out of, you can switch from wind forecast to wave forecast to rain forecast, it's great.
Accuweather, of all the big weather forecast sites, I find to be most accurate. It shows daily and hourly forecasts with % chances of rain.
One issue with Phuket weather forecasts is that the weather here is often very localised. It might be raining in one part of Phuket, sunny in another. Thunderstorms and showers can last just a short time, so an otherwise dry day is marked as "rainy". You may see little weather symbols which indicate rain, but please .. this does not mean it will rain all day all over Phuket. We do sometimes get heavy weather with a few days of rain over a large area in low season, but that is not so common. Weather here in Phuket in low/wet season is very changeable and normally very localised.
Other forecast tools ...
The
Phuket weather (rain) radar is useful to see what is on the way soon! You can see rain coming in, it's good to estimate how wet or dry the next few hours may be, good for short term planning.
A
weather satellite is also good for looking at incoming weather.
There are lots of weather forecasts on the web for Phuket. By all means do have a look but they do tend to be inaccurate and don't take into account localised weather. Often in low season, some of these sites are just set on "Chance of Rain" or "Chance of Thunderstorm" every day! And that's a load of crap. You can check the Phuket forecast at
Weather.com,
Yahoo,
BBC, or the
Thai Meteorological Department.
