Basseterre month by month, at a glance
Hover each month for the summary. Click to pin it.
Almost all of the Caribbean holds its carnival before Lent, between February and March. Saint Kitts and Nevis does not: here the big festival starts in mid-December and ends on 2 January, and that shifts the best moment of the year to an unexpected slot in the calendar.
01 A surprisingly dry capital
The first fact undoes the idea of a soaked tropical island: Basseterre accumulates around 900 millimetres of rain a year and its climate is classified as semi-arid. It sits on the leeward side, sheltered by the mountain, and that leaves it far drier than the windward slopes of the same island.
The dry season runs from December to April. February and March each end with 40 millimetres and fewer than two rainy days; January adds 50 millimetres over barely two days. Those are arid-zone figures, not rainforest ones.
Temperature, as always at these latitudes, barely moves: average highs of 28.7 degrees in January and 31.2 in August and October. What changes from month to month is humidity and the number of showers.
Key moments at a glance
The national carnival begins and the weather has already turned dry.
40 millimetres over 1.8 rainy days, with mild highs of 28.8 degrees.
The hottest month, with 100 millimetres and seven rainy days.
120 millimetres and the most active stretch of the hurricane season.
The national carnival is called Sugar Mas and it takes up the last three weeks of December and the first two days of January. The big parade is on 1 January and the closing Last Lap on the 2nd.
The name is not accidental: it comes from the sugar harvest. When the island lived on sugar, the pause before cutting fell in these weeks, and the festival settled there and stayed even after the industry closed in 2005.
For the traveller that means the two things coincide: the best weather of the year and the week when the capital is at its liveliest. It also means high-season prices and scarce accommodation, so book far ahead.
03 June to November, with September circled
The Atlantic hurricane season runs from 1 June to 30 November and these islands sit squarely in the arc. The wettest months are September, with 120 millimetres, and October, with 115, spread over about eight rainy days each.
It is not that it rains all day: these are showers that pass. The problem with the August-to-October stretch is not average rainfall, it is the chance that a tropical system will rearrange flights, ferries and excursions at very short notice.
The compensation is visual. In those months the island is at its greenest and the slopes that look strawy in March are covered in tall grass. If landscape matters to you more than the schedule, that is the deal.
04 April and May, the hinge
April still counts as dry season, with 55 millimetres, but the temperature is already rising: an average high of 30.1 degrees against January's 28.7. May marks the change with 75 millimetres and almost six rainy days.
Those transition weeks are, for many people, the year's best compromise: the island starts to green up, prices have come down from the January peak and hurricane season has not yet begun.
Here carnival does not mark the start of spring: it marks the end of the dry year and the beginning of the next.
05 How to choose
If you want the best possible weather and do not mind crowds, go between mid-December and early January: you get the dry season and the carnival at once. If you prefer the same weather without the festival, February and March are close to perfect and considerably quieter.
If you want the green island and low prices, aim for May or June. And if your only window is August to October, travel anyway, but leave margin on transfers and do not chain together excursions that depend on the sea.
