Tuesday morning and it's sunny! That's not really news, except I've not really seen any sun since last Tuesday! The last update on the weather blog mentioned that we had a bit more rain that week, having had a really dry start to August. Well, it was on August 23rd that I took this photo :



The sun set with glorious colour, but as I drove home the rain started. It rained pretty hard that night, I measured 58mm of rain, but Wednesday 24th was wetter, with over 100mm, and Thursday had 75mm. I guess August decided it did not want to be below average! It's been a real month of 2 halves.. the first half of August I measured 27mm of rain. And in the last 10 days, more than 400mm!

The local news websites told of a man who had touched a live electric socket in the rain and died on Thursday morning. And then there were some floods here and there, mostly in Patong. Also the wind and rain on Thursday morning delayed some flights in and out of Phuket. Check reports in the Phuket Gazette and The Phuket News. Patong always seems to have flood problems when it rains hard. Water runs down from the hills and with natural drainage lacking due to everything being covered with concrete, the water finds place to sit and so roads get very wet ... Not good driving conditions, I read in the news about a couple of accidents that were certainly due to the rain. Young kids do tend to race bikes, and in the rain they'll shield their face with their hand, and ride faster in order to get out of the rain quicker. On wet roads, especially over the hills, you have to drive carefully.

This photo from the Phuket Gazette:



Looks pretty bad, but I understand the floods only lasted half a day in most places. On that very wet Thursday I drove 20km from home near Phuket Town to Karon Beach about 8:30am via Chalong, and saw no floods. And drove back about 4:30pm and saw no floods. So large parts of Phuket were not affected. Yes it was very wet, but flooding was localised. Be careful what you read, as some news reports made it sound like 2012 "The worst natural disaster since the tsunami" was something I read on a website that I will no longer read or mention, quite ridiculous reporting. The word "flood" does tend to sound bad, but if a road is covered by a big puddle, some people will call that a flood. I am sure some parts had bigger floods and I am sure some houses and businesses may have got wet, but this happens pretty much every year to some degree. Over the last few days I have driven around 300km without seeing any floods.

Certainly if anyone was on holiday in Phuket over the last week, you've not had the best time! Nobody wants to go for a stroll on the beach in the rain! I mean, it was not raining non-stop, there have been breaks, but this morning (30th) is the first sun I have seen for a week - apart from about 10 minutes yesterday afternoon. It's not normal to get a whole week of crappy weather like this. Low season storms tend to blow in from the west and last about 3 days. This last week has been a drag.. but the sun is shining now. The weather radar shows no rain, the forecast is good.

Note that on this blog are several very useful weather tools - look at the top left of the page - links for webcams, weather radar, satellite pictures and the very good Windguru forecast. I hope to get out somewhere today and take a few sunny photos - my camera did not come out this last 6 days - I don't fancy taking "wet day photos"! Looks like the next week will be sunny again, I think the sky is all rained out. We've got builders in our house today, going to retile the bathroom and build a new ceiling. Nice day for it!

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Finally some rain! I write this on a grey, damp Wednesday morning. It's been raining most of the night.. my rain gauge says 58mm in the last 24 hours. Nothing too heavy, but needed to sustain life! The first half of August I measured 27mm of rain. In the last week, another 130mm. These numbers can sound like a lot, if you compare to non-tropical places. Example: Manchester gets a bad rap as a wet place in England, but average rainfall in Manchester for August is .. 79mm (source). So you're thinking "But, if Manchester is wet and Phuket is wetter, it must be really wet and crappy in Phuket, right?". WRONG. It's a different kind of rain. Manchester gets that English drizzle. It can be damp and grey all day and the records show 10mm of rain. Here you can get a sudden thunderstorm, lasts 1 hour and you get 40mm of rain. Phuket is tropical and very green. Green things can't grow without some rain. We get plenty of rain here, but the question is really "How often will rain affect my holiday plans?". Well... a little rain in the day won't mess you around much, you can take trips, go explore the island, go diving, no worries. At this time of year maybe carry a small umbrella. Rain won't hurt you, and indeed if you have not spent much time in tropical zones, a big ol' thunderstorm can be quite exciting!

So has the 130mm of rain this week messed me around? No. It's largely been quite a hot and sunny week. Some of the rain has been at night, some has been during the day. There's not been much wind so we've seen localised thunderstorms. My wife called me a couple of days ago to day it was raining hard at our house near Phuket Town. I was at Karon Beach and the sky was blue! Distance from one to the other, about 10km as the eagle flies... but with a 1700 foot hill in between us. Wednesday and Friday evenings I was in Phuket Town, checking out the Por Tor Festival (Hungry Ghost Festival), a small festival of Chinese origin. Very interesting and a couple of nice dry warm evenings in Phuket Town.





(above) Street outside the market on Ranong Road in Phuket Town

And red turtles! These red turtle cakes, called Ang Ku, are used as offerings in the festival. We visited the famous Keng Tin Chinese bakery. Many people buy their turtles here, the shop is now being run by the great grand daughter of the first owner...



And on to the Por Tor Kong shrine. You can find much more information about the festival on my Phuket Blog here : Por Tor Festival.



More hot days over the weekend, mixed with a little rain, but really nice conditions for being on the water. Sometimes at this time of year you can't be sure of not getting seasick, but there's not been a lot of wind this last week. Diving has been good and the dive boats have been busy, with many people taking advantage of the good weather. Some of our customers saw a whaleshark last week, nice!

Yesterday had been a mix of sun and sudden downpours, but the late afternoon looked good, and the After Beach Bar was beckoning ... I met up with the owner of the excellent Travelfish website for a couple of beers with a view. If you think there might be a good sunset coming, this is a good place to be ....!





Not bad, eh? The coastline south of Kata Beach has quite a few viewpoints, there's also the 3 Beaches Viewpoint, the Naiharn Viewpoint and of course Phromthep Cape. All good for sunsets.

Don't know if we'll get a sunset today .. it's 8:30am and the rain has stopped, but it looks very grey to the west. Well, you can't have great weather every day in the low season!

August should be a lot wetter than this! I know everyone (including me) likes nice sunny days, but we do actually need rain to live! I took a walk at the Bang Wad reservoir this week and the water level is certainly a bit low. I measured no rain for the first 8 days of August, and since then a total of 27mm in the last week. That's not much! The monthly average for August is over 300mm (see Phuket Rain Averages). The driest August I have on record (measurements since 1998) is 89mm which was in 2005, which was also the driest year I have on record (1998 - 2010). So will 2011 be really dry? Or will the rains come sometime soon? Easy to be selfish about the weather.. I'll be on holiday for a couple of weeks from the end of September, and planning trips to Khao Sok National Park, Raya Island, and the Phuket Vegetarian Festival is on.. so I would like a couple of fairly dry weeks then.

I should update this Phuket weather blog a little more often, but don't like to post mini updates like "today was nice".. there is a better place for that kind of update - TWITTER - you can follow me on Twitter @jamiemonk for weather updates, news, Phuket related things.

Some Tweets from the last week:

9th August Is it going to be another sunny day in Phuket? Rather cloudy right now.. could we get some rain? No rain so far in August!

10th August Big Phuket weather news! I measured 2mm of rain last night! First rain of August.

11th August Actually had some rain this morning and more than a few drips too.. still hot though and the sun was out this morning too. Now rather grey.

12th August Not sunny.. makes a nice change! Everyone was complaining that it's been so hot. Today certainly cooler.

13th August Sun and rain today in Phuket. Hardly any wind, was raining in Phuket Town but sunny on the west coast.

15th August Phuket weather today .. one of those sunny, no hang on it's looking a bit dark, ooh sunny again, rain? ah, sunny again... kind of days.

Hoping for a sunny afternoon, I'd like to visit the Karon Temple market today, it's on every Tuesday. And tomorrow evening, please no rain! The "Por Tor" festival is going on in Phuket Town (Chinese Hungry Ghost festival) and I'm going to have a look on a guided tour with Phuket Heritage Trails.

August is low season. The average monthly rainfall in August is well over 300mm. So this week you might expect this Phuket weather blog update to be talking about rain and wind and storms, and .. what was that word? Ah, Monsoon! Well, not this week. My rain gauge is dry. Maybe a few drops somewhere on the island.. well, I did feel a few drops on Saturday afternoon, and I do mean literally a few drops. The last week has seen blue skies, light winds, not low season weather at all.

I have pinched the photo below from the Rawai Beach Facebook Page. The photo was taken today (Monday 8th August).



I was not able to get out today, working hard at the dive shop until nearly 7pm. But I did manage to get away earlier on a couple of days last week. The sunset at this time of year is about 6:45pm, but the days are already getting shorter! By the end of August, sunset is 6:35pm. The earliest sunset is just after 6pm in the middle of November. I took advantage of the later sunset to take a couple of drives to Naiharn Beach. One evening I went to the wind turbine viewpoint near Naiharn beach. Someone was paragliding there:



The view is great, one of so many nice views in Phuket:



The next day, I headed the same way but stopped at Naiharn Temple. I am trying to blog all Phuket temples, but somehow had never been to the Buddhist temple at Naiharn. And my luck was in. As the sun bathed the hills with an orange glow, monks were praying in the temple.



Is this weather going to continue a while longer? I think so, but surely some bad weather has to come sometime or we'll be complaining about a drought soon! I keep saying it! Low season is not so low. You might be unlucky, but you are more likely to be lucky! And hotel prices are certainly low in low season. See you in Phuket :)

A quick summary of July 2011 weather in Phuket - A mixed bag, but actually that's really typical of the low season. July is never that bad really. The total rainfall was 282mm (measured at my house) compared to an average of 223mm - so in terms of rainfall, wetter than average, BUT there were 19 days with no rain. And some long sunny periods - from 3rd - 10th July, no rain (See better than high season), then pretty wet from 11th - 15th, and then dry again from 16th - 22nd, then a wetter end to the month, but no rain at all since the 29th July.

Anyway, as I say again, the word "rain" should not put people off, there might just be 1 hour of rain in an otherwise warm sunny day. The weather is just not that bad. Only problem really in low season is the waves at the beaches. A couple more people drowned this last month at Karon Beach, both after going for a swim on a red-flagged beach after sunset. In big waves. Please, if you are reading this and coming to Phuket, look at the sea and think first. See a red flag? That means "no swimming". See a lifeguard telling you not to swim? Listen to him. Please don't drown in Phuket.

Bloody hot day today, a bit hazy - indeed foggy - Phuket Gazette has a story here. It says "The fog was caused by a decrease in air pressure and temperature and an increase in humidity coupled with intermittent rains, causing the air to sink". Been hot the last few days and the winds have died down too. Very nice weather. Very nice.

Now, last week, there was a tropical storm called Nok-Ten which had caused loss of life in the Philippines due to heavy rain. The storm was then heading slowly west towards Vietnam. I was following the storm on the excellent Tropical Storm Risk website, and could see that it was not heading in our direction. So I was surprised to see the following headline on the Phuket Wan website on 29th July:

Phuket Weather Alert: Killer Storm 'Heading This Way'

The 'story' is here. Well, I saw this and right away left a comment saying what I thought of the headline - misleading, inaccurate, sensationalist - and added a link to the Tropical Storm Risk website which clearly showed no risk to Phuket. The editor of Phuket Wan is never wrong, so my comment was not shown, only a rebuttal to my (unshown) comment by the ever sarcastic and always correct editor. And of course, the storm did not come here of have any effect anywhere near here. And of course I had to answer several emails from people who had seen this idiotic headline and were worried. The Phuket Wan website sometimes has great breaking news, but sometimes is just way off, and the editor just will not back down or admit to being incorrect. In this case the headline was totally unjustified, quite ridiculous. At the time of posting the 'story' the storm was near Hainan island (China) - thats about 2,000km from Phuket. Be careful what you believe!

And hey, it's not just Phuket Wan.. the Phuket Gazette had a great story recently with the headline 47 injured as ‘Phuket express’ train slams into truck - OK, so.... there are no trains to Phuket.. the nearest train station is at Surat Thani, over 200km from Phuket.. and the train crash happened at Ratchaburi, which is just outside Bangkok, about 800km from Phuket. And yet, somehow this train was called the Phuket Express! Yeh, maybe this beats Phuket Wan for dumbass headline of the year.

So, no rain since the 29th, which was when the 'KILLER STORM' was heading our way. Sunny and a bit hazy. Today started really nice and fresh with clear skies but that fog has come in. I am Tweeting comments on the weather almost every day, please do Follow me on Twitter. The weather was so nice this morning that I was surprised to see yet another warning on the ever-accurate Phuket Wan website. See here : Phuket Storm Warning. It said "A severe weather warning has been issued for Phuket and Phang Nga on Tuesday, with waves of up to three metres expected." - I looked out the window again.. then checked the wind forecast - calm, and the Thai Meteorological Department website for confirmation of the warning - none, and the satellite picture - clear skies near Phuket. I left a comment on the article. Not published by the editor. There were no nasty words, but .. the editor is never wrong. And I doubted Him. (deliberate sarcastic use of capital H)

There HAS been a lot of rain in parts of Northern Thailand in the last few days due to the remnants of Nock-Ten - floods in some places. I had someone contact me today asking about the floods in Phuket. Geography lesson. The affected area in the North of Thailand is about 1,500km from Phuket.

Current weather now, after 9pm on Tuesday - HOT, the foggy air makes for a warm night. Forecast for tomorrow, well, if you see a storm warning in Phuket Wan, I am not saying ignore it.... but do check other sources first. I reckon tomorrow will be hot and sunny. I might just dash to the beach after work for some photos of the nice hot sunny weather or a pretty sunset. Get it while you can, before the next rainy spell comes in. That's what low season is all about.

Please note, all comments are moderated on this blog. And I am never wrong.