Roatan weather right now and the week ahead
Roatan
8:53 pm island time
Wind
101118 knmphkm/h
330°
Measured 12 kn13 mph22 km/h NNE at the airport, within the hour.
Next 24 hours · knots· mph· km/h
Now
101118
77%
3am
121322
76%
4am
121322
80%
5am
141625
85%
6am
151727
90%
7am
131424
92%
8am
151727
93%
9am
151727
92%
10am
151727
92%
11am
141625
91%
12pm
161829
84%
1pm
161829
66%
2pm
161829
42%
3pm
151727
22%
4pm
141625
11%
5pm
141625
5%
6pm
131424
2%
7pm
111220
2%
8pm
101118
4%
9pm
91016
10%
10pm
101118
20%
11pm
111220
33%
12am
121322
43%
1am
121322
48%
Bars scale to today’s own peak, so the shape shows when it picks up rather than how today compares to tomorrow. The figure under each is the chance of rain in that hour.
Swell
0.9m
3.0 ft · 5s · outside the reef
Water
30°C
86°F
UV
8
Very high
Air
24°C
feels 29° · 61% humidity
What the forecasters expect
6pm–6pm
Nothing significant, wind 12 kn NW
9pm–1am at times
Thunderstorms and rain
6am–10am at times
Thunderstorms and rain
The airport’s own forecast, issued 5:00 pm by a meteorologist rather than a model. Covers wind, visibility and cloud, not sea state.
Moon
Full
100% lit · full Sun 25 Oct
Which side is sheltered
- North shore Wind straight in
- South shore Sheltered
- West End Some chop
- East end Some chop
Driving this 330° NNW at 10 kn, gusting 14. 90% chance of rain today, and the windward side always catches more of it.
Seven days
| Day | Wind | Gusts | From | Swell | Rain | UV |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Sun 25 | 13 kn | 18 kn | NW | 1 m | 90% | 8 |
| Mon 26 | 16 kn | 22 kn | W | 1.1 m | 93% | 8 |
| Tue 27 | 16 kn | 22 kn | WNW | 1 m | 85% | 8 |
| Wed 28 | 11 kn | 15 kn | NW | 0.8 m | 75% | 8 |
| Thu 29 | 11 kn | 16 kn | W | 0.6 m | 48% | 8 |
| Fri 30 | 7 kn | 12 kn | W | 0.7 m | 33% | 8 |
| Sat 31 | 7 kn | 14 kn | W | 0.4 m | 28% | 8 |
Daily maximums, not averages: a calm morning does not rescue a windy afternoon. These are island-wide: the model cannot tell one end from the other, so use the shelter diagram for that. Planning a crossing?
Where these numbers come from
Measured
Roatan airport (MHRO) via the US Aviation Weather Center: a real instrument, hourly. Not a 24-hour station, so it can go quiet overnight.
Forecast
Open-Meteo, running ECMWF, GFS and ICON. Global models resolve to 9–25 km; Roatan is 5 km wide. Good for wind across the island as a whole, poor for where a squall lands.
Why there is no east-versus-west number
We tried it. The model put Camp Bay nine knots calmer than West Bay on a trade-wind day, which is backwards from what anyone who drives out there will tell you: a 9 km grid cell over the eastern hills damps the wind, while West Bay's cell is mostly open water. So we publish the shelter geometry instead, which gets it right.
Which side is sheltered
Worked out from the wind direction and the shape of the island, not from any model. Roatan runs southwest to northeast with a 220 m ridge down the middle, so one coast is always in the lee, and a norte flips it entirely. The windward side also catches more rain: the ridge wrings it out.
Swell
Modelled, and the weakest figure here. The nearest buoy is 530 km away near Jamaica, so nothing measured checks it, and inside the reef it is almost always calmer.
Sun, moon, storms and quakes
Sun and moon are calculated from NOAA solar equations rather than looked up. Storms come from the National Hurricane Center, earthquakes from USGS at magnitude 3.5 and above within 400 km. COPECO alerts are set by hand: they publish by department, not by feed.
Forecasts, not guarantees. Check with your captain or dive shop before going out. Updated 8:00 pm.
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