Well, after having no rain at all for the first 15 days in August, the last 2 weeks has made up for it! The last update on the Phuket weather blog was August 22nd, which was itself quite a nice sunny day, only with wet roads and minor floods (see that last update for some photos) caused by 200mm of rain the night before! Nothing serious, and the "floods" mostly gone by the afternoon. The word "flood" is easily misused and misinterpreted, some local news reports were typically over sensational. I actually saw no flooded roads between my house (Kathu, near Phuket Town) and Karon Beach, 20km away. Phuket Town got wet, but local people there told us the water was gone by mid afternoon, so headlines like "Phuket floods damage roads, pull down power poles" are too much. Maybe 1 or 2 small sections of road in the whole island damaged and 2 power poles fell down, but a headline makes it sound much worse. Truth : Heavy rain and minor flooding with minor damage to roads and property in some areas. Life not affected in any way. Off my soapbox, I know news has to sell itself.

Anyway, the last 6 days have been pretty wet, with patches of sun. August 23rd started sunny, or at least not too cloudy. I Tweeted "Phuket weather right now - light grey with the sun trying to make an appearance.", but later on the 23rd (last Thursday) the rain came in again, nothing much, 29mm falling during the afternoon and night. We dodged the raindrops in Phuket Town and went for a coffee at the Kopitiam cafe on Thalang Road in the old town.



Friday 24th was mostly grey, not wet .. again with rain falling in the night. Saturday started nice and sunny, our kids went to (rock) music lessons and we drove up Rang Hill for some fresh air. Kids wanted to watch a movie at the cinema, and we saw that 'Brave' would be showing at the multiplex cinema at the Central Festival mall. Before that I had time for a quick dash into Phuket Town. I wanted to get some photos of the Thavorn hotel which opened in 1961 and was Phuket's first 5 star hotel. It's not 5 star now, you can get a room for as low as 600 Baht, but downstairs the lobby still looks quite grand, and they have a kind of museum, a room full of old relics. I'll blog about it sometime soon.





Brave was good and the whole family wiped away a tear. For movie schedules, check here. Useful for a rainy day. Actually when we went into the cinema, it was still sunny. When we left it was raining cats and dogs. Didn't rain all night, but raining hard when we got home. At which point someone had to sacrifice their dryness to go open the gate and you start to think that an electronic gate would be very cool.

Sunday 26th - grey with patches of wet. I did not go out taking photos of the rain and grey skies, by Sunday I was feeling a bit sh*tty with a red eye, sore throat and swollen glands. I went to work on Monday but wished I hadn't! Aside from not feeling too great, it was a really wet and windy day, one of the crappiest of the year! Total rain for Monday (measured 7am Monday - 7am Tuesday) was 112mm. Boats should not really be out in that weather - a speedboat sank between Phuket and Phi Phi, thankfully with no casualties - see news here.

It's Wednesday morning now, and sunny. I was at home yesterday and still at home today, not feeling too healthy still with swollen neck and bad cough. Need another cup of tea and probably some antibiotics too. Poor me!

August has been a game of 2 halves. 15 dry days, and since the 16th we've had 600mm of rain according to my rain gauge. Wettest August on my records, going back to 1998. Over half of that total was on just 2 days though, so it's not like we've had constant rain. Saturday was mostly nice for example. I think we'll get another spell of good weather now. Today is turning out nice. But I don't suppose I'll leave the house, gotta get better!

A quick summary of recent weather.... Between 10th July and 15th August 2012, I recorded a total of 6mm of rainfall at our house (in Kathu, a few km from Phuket Town). Basically for about 6 weeks we had hot, hot weather. Not at all usual for the low season, "rainy season" or whatever you wish to call this time of year. If you were here during that 6 weeks, well played! Cheap hotel rates (see Agoda for hotels) and weather better than high season! It couldn't last forever of course, some rain had to fall...

The last update on the Phuket weather blog was 15th August. Well on the 16th it was cloudy and there was some rain in the night, hardly any on my house, but certainly some in Patong, which may have contributed (by causing an electrical short) to a tragic early morning (after closing time) fire at the Tiger Disco, in which 4 people died.

Then it started getting wetter ... night of the 17th I got the first real rain on my house for 6 weeks, with 29mm being measured by my faithful rain gauge. The morning of the 18th was rather grey, looked like more rain coming, but things brightened, which was good, as I wanted to get out and take photos in Phuket Town. I wandered up Yaowarat Road, and found several big old houses ...





And then had lunch at Abduls Roti Shop on Thalang Road.



The rain fell again (not much) on Saturday night, enough to bring the frogs out, chanting their beautiful melodies outside the bedroom window. The changing weather may have helped my son to get a bit of a fever on Saturday.. and now this week I've got a bit of a cold too. On Sunday we did not do much, though it was a pretty sunny day I did not want to take fever boy out. Late breakfast in the food court at the Central Festival mall, and we did take a drive later in the afternoon, I'd seen a hill on Google Earth, just north of the airport. On top is this ...



It's the Phuket weather radar! I've never been up this hill before. Views were OK, though the hill is covered in trees. Would need to climb up the radar tower to get a better view (I didn't).



Monday 20th was largely sunny, but then overnight there was a big downpour. I measured 86mm, most of which fell overnight and surely helped a bus to flip over on the main road to the airport in the wee hours. It was quite a wet day at Karon Beach too, though at my house in Kathu it had been quite dry. Rain can be very localised.

OK, saving the best for last! Well, last night was wet. Really wet. It rained all night. I was shocked by the reading on my rain gauge for the period from 7am 21st - 7am 22nd August, a total of 210mm of rain! That's more than I can remember in a single day** and I figured there would surely be some flooded roads somewhere. Surprised that my 20km drive to Karon Beach was flood-free, but I soon heard about wet roads in Phuket Town and Patong and some flight delays at the airport. Nothing real serious. I don't like to say "floods" as people tend to overreact. There was water on some roads, it slowed transport, made some houses and shops wet, but it never lasts long. Mostly all drained away during the day.

Photos below from The Phuket News. First one on Dibuk Road in Phuket Town this morning. My wife drove on that road at 5pm and there was no water. So it drains off fast, looks dramatic, but in reality, the locals just take it with a pinch of salt.



Local life just carries on as normal, this happens every year, nothing to worry about.. here's a motorbike taxi in Phuket Town...



And the same piece of road that had a sinkhole problem last year collapsed again on the edge of Patong Hill (the road leading over to Phuket Town and Kathu). Guess they'll fill it in with gravel again.



Hey, nothing too serious, and I think all gone now. In fact, today was mostly sunny, a nice warm day. Water drains off Phuket quickly into the sea. Let's see what happens the rest of this week ... Must be some more rain to come.

** Looking back through old rainfall data. October 9th 2004, over 300mm was recorded - not by me, but by the guy I got the rain gauge from. So yesterday/last night was not the wettest day I have ever seen. In 2004 I was doing some weather updates on our dive shop page, and at that time I wrote "Really wet day. Heavy rain and minor flooding in some areas. Where's my ark?".

Cheers and do follow me on Twitter for daily updates.

I am now hard pushed to recall exactly when we last had some proper rainfall. Although May was quite wet, and there was a very wet spell in early June and another week of rainy days in early July, since then - 2 words. Hot. Sunny. Every time I post an update on Twitter it says "hot and sunny". And I can see the green hills starting to look a little brown. This would not be a good time to visit a waterfall. There's not much water to be falling! However, if you have been in Phuket recently, or are coming (very) soon (if this weather continues) then your low season bargain trip has been a good one! Great weather for diving, for anything out on the water, for day trips, for lazing in the sun, for taking photos of blue skies...



(above) This was at Karon Beach in the morning, Monday 13th August. Despite the light winds and sunshine, you still have to be careful swimming at the beach. I've not seen any reports of drownings recently, but I could see that, where I was standing to take the photo, the water quickly got deep, and with the water draining rapidly back into the sea, you have to be careful of rip currents at this time of year. If you see bigger waves than those in the picture above, do be careful.

So really, for the last week - no weather to report. Only sunshine! This is supposed to be low season, rainy season, and I suppose if you were unlucky and had your holiday during one of the wet spells, you have a very different idea of Phuket weather than anyone who's been here in the last month. I like to tell people that the low season is not too bad really, but this is nuts! We do actually need some rain.

A holiday in Phuket during low season (May to October) can be a bit of a gamble, and the hotel prices certainly make coming to Phuket a good deal (for hotels in Phuket, have a look at Agoda or look at my recommended Phuket hotels). You might get lucky, you might not. I don't complain when the weather is like this, but as a resident, I'm quite happy with some rain too, so we don't have to worry about the possibility of water shortages later in the year.

Last weekend we had a couple of evenings in Phuket Town, my favourite part of Phuket (yes, I know the beaches are nice). We walked a bit in the old town. The picture below was taken on Soi Romanee, a narrow street which (according to local history) used to be full of "houses of ill repute". Now a rather pretty street with several cafes, a couple of small guesthouses and plenty of well looked after old buildings.



We had dinner at a place called Route 68 which is on Thalang Road, also in the old town. They had live music on the Saturday evening, just a guy and a guitar, nothing overpowering. This is the Phuket that we like. Here's Route 68 ...



The weather has continued "hot and sunny" into the week. The trouble with this weather is .. I wish I was on holiday in Phuket and not working :) Anyone who wants to dive, come to see me at Sunrise Divers.

Forecast : More hot and sunny weather, but a big thunderstorm would be quite welcome!

Well, this is getting silly! The weather is broken. This low season, anyone visiting Phuket has either been too hot or too wet. Last month we had over 300mm of rain in a very wet first 9 days. If you were in Phuket in the first week of July, you may well curse any silly blogger who says that the low season is quite nice :) And after that? Well, my rain gauge measured 6mm in the next 3 weeks. And now we're a week into August, and it's still hot. Have seen a few minor showers, that's all - like yesterday morning, a sudden shower which lasted about 2 minutes. Anyone who's been in Phuket the last few weeks has to be thinking "Wow! we got great weather in the low season!" - truth is that the low season is mostly OK. Anyone who gets a totally rained-out holiday is very unlucky. Main bonus in low season is the hotel rates - way down on high season.

I'm certainly not complaining about the good weather, although the heat does start to get tiresome. I like the low season weather because it's normally very mixed. In a "normal" low season, weather changes every few days. Rain is good, we need rain to cool off, to water the green island, to fill the reservoirs. Not enough rain and people start to talk about water shortages. A tourist coming for 7 days wants 7 days of sun. A local wants some rain sometimes! The nice weather this month has allowed us a couple of very nice days out, we visited Koh Yao Noi, the Gibbon Rehabilitation Center, Kathu Temple, and this last weekend there has been a street festival in Kathu village, just round the corner from our house. The weather was kind this year, and the streets have been full. On August 4th in the evening, there was a street parade...







The street fair continued for 3 evenings. Yesterday, I found a cure for the heat:



Must quickly mention the Olympics, very happy that I can watch everything live on Youtube, wish I could stay awake until 3am to watch some more of the athletics, but have been enjoying it all - cycling, horses, canoeing, rowing, even gymnastics. Makes me proud to be British, but at the same time, happy to be living in Phuket :)