What the low season in Phuket should be like

Finally, we have what I would call "normal" low season weather here in Phuket. A bit of sun, a bit of rain, a bit of wind, some days better than others. Somehow I have not updated here for 10 days, though if anyone really wants to know what the weather is like right now, do Follow me on Twitter or have a look at the Surin Beach Webcam. The other webcams that are linked to on the weather blog are not running at the moment. The Patong webcam needs a new camera and the Karon webcam is supposed to be back next month when the Marina resort where it's located completes it's building work.

Not been the most exciting last 10 days. Heads down and work. But I am starting a 2 week holiday today! The kids finished their school term on Wednesday (2 days ago) after their end of term tests which I made them do some studying for at the weekend instead of going out too much. This coming weekend, it's my turn to pray for sun as we are booked for 2 days at Racha Yai Island, which hopefully will look something like this : (photo taken in 2011)



Today (Friday) started grey and a bit damp at 7am (yeh, on holiday but still wake up early) but the blue sky is appearing and I would like to take the family for a nice lunch somewhere. On low season days like this you just hope for the best, make the best of what weather you get. Looks OK, might be some rain around, but days like this are fine for getting out and about, like most low season days.

In the last 10 days we've had about 150mm of rain, only a couple of days with no rain, some windy days which actually made some waves for last weekend's surfing contest at Patong beach. Here's a selection of my Tweets from this last week which show the weather at this time of year very clearly...

September 12th "Today so far : sunny, heavy rain, cloudy, sunny, dark clouds gathering, heavy rain, cloudy, sunny, cloudy again = proper low season weather"

September 13th "It's a "wet 'n' wild" day so far in Phuket. Not really heavy rain, but blanket grey skies, quite windy and lots of showers"

By the way, certainly no floods here. There are again, like last year, some floods in Central/North Thailand in a few areas and some people are worried there might be some flooding in Bangkok again, but not in Phuket.

On the 13th in the evening we tried a new cafe in Phuket Town called "Since 1892" on Thalang Road, which we'll visit again so I can take photos and blog it!

September 14th "Sun is out .. did not expect that today, thought it would be a wet one all day"

September 15th "Wet and windy morning again. Hope it clears up, I am hoping to have a sunny afternoon at Surin beach"

Did visit Surin beach to meet up with Stuart who runs the excellent Travelfish travel guide to SE Asia. I have not been to Surin for ages (years?). It was very quiet with quite a few businesses closed up for low season. We took a walk along the beach and had a few beers in a bar with 2 customers and 8 staff! Weather was OK, almost had a sunset!





These guys had recovered some old rope from the sea and were hauling it along the beach, must have weighed a ton being all saturated with seawater ...



Dark clouds approached later, and the wind whipped up for a few minutes driving everyone indoors but there was no heavy rain at Surin that evening, looked like the heavy rain hit the coast a bit further south at Kamala or Patong beaches.

This last few days has been all work and no play. Work for me (aside from an evening in Phuket Town having a few beers) and study for the kids. Weather has been REAL low season, changing several times per day. Starting today we can relax. 9am now and the sun is coming out. I woke early so have already done work emails and the weather blog and the whole day is ahead of us. Holidays!