That's right, we have hardly had much rain at all since before the new year, and both Antigua and Barbuda are looking very dry indeed. Gone are the green landscapes and hills sides in the South of the island, and quite often bare soil is what you are seeing in people's yards. This makes me shake my head for two reasons. First, because I don't like to see the island suffering in times of drought. Animals and plants need rain water to thrive and all natural life on the mainland is using it's reserves slowly while hoping for a little rain.
Today I watered my lawn which was very dusty indeed. Much of the grass is now gone and the plants were screaming for some sky juice.
As you can see from these photos, my yard is very dry.
Also you will see the ten day weather forecast from weather.com for antigua which for the past 11 years has been forecasting rain almost every day. That's the second reason that I shake my head. These simple animated weather forecasts always predict and show rain for Antigua even at times when we are experiencing terrible drought. So many potential tourists are turned off Antigua even before they reserve their flights and hotel rooms after seeing these incorrect forecasts, and the ones who see these stupid forecasts worry and fret all over the internet. Here is a typical post as seen on a regular basis on Tripadvisor:
“ weather ”
Jan 18, 2010, 1:06 PM
hi we are going to antigua in 4 days.
i keep looking at the 10 day forcast and it
is rainy every day. does it only rain for 10mins
or are we in for rainy weather. we are hoping
for nice weather and the beach. be there friday the 22nd
and can't wait, bill
Over the past decade I have spent so much of my time trying in many ways to tell people on the net that the forecasts constantly predicting rain for Antigua and Barbuda are not right. I am on most of the tourist forums telling people that it's not in fact raining. I blog about it regularly.
Click here and
here for examples of those blogs on two different sites which both have good info by the way, and the first one explains why weather.com and the other simple animated forecasts get forecasting for Antigua so wrong. Both blogs give you an alternative and more accurate forecast for Antigua weather.
Another thing I do is use twitter to show normal sunny everyday photos. It's no Antigua live web cam, but it's an attempt to show what the weather is like from someone on the ground here in Antigua. My twitter log in is
www.twitter.com/antigua so if you are interested you can "follow" me or just check it from time to time for images and a bit of banter.
Anyway,
Adventure Antigua, my snorkeling and sight seeing trips, charters and tours usually work better when it's nice and sunny, but some rainfall would be a blessing for the island overall. Hopefully when it comes, if it comes, the rain will fall at night!
