Port of Spain month by month, at a glance
Hover each month for the summary. Click to pin it.
Trinidad has an advantage almost no other Caribbean island can offer: it sits at ten degrees north, outside the usual hurricane corridor. That completely changes the calculation of when to come, because the wettest month is not also the riskiest.
01 Outside the hurricane belt
Position matters. Almost all the islands of the arc lie between 12 and 18 degrees of latitude, right on the track of the cyclones crossing the Atlantic; Trinidad is further south, almost against the South American coast, and the systems tend to pass above it.
That does not mean immunity. The precedent the whole country remembers is Hurricane Flora, which came ashore in Tobago on 30 September 1963 with winds of 165 kilometres an hour and destroyed more than two thousand seven hundred houses on the small island.
But the exception proves the rule: in more than sixty years nothing similar has happened again. For the traveller, that means that in the wet half of the year the problem is rain, not evacuation.
Key moments at a glance
48.6 millimetres over eight days and, more often than not, the year's big week.
40.6 millimetres over just 6.1 rainy days.
243.4 millimetres over nineteen days: the change is abrupt.
255.3 millimetres, the maximum, over eighteen rainy days.
02 January to April: the clear window
The dry season runs from January to April and is unmistakable. January adds 79.6 millimetres, February 48.6, March 40.6 and April 51.6, with six to eleven rainy days a month. After May, those figures multiply by four or five.
It is the only part of the year when you can plan outdoors with confidence: walks in the northern range, north coast beaches and birdwatching outings without the afternoon closing in.
It is also high season, and for good reason. The city concentrates its calendar in those months, and accommodation in the central weeks sells out far in advance.
The big date is not fixed: carnival falls on the Monday and Tuesday before Ash Wednesday, so it can land in early February or almost in March depending on the year. Everything else is organised around it.
The preceding weeks are, for many people, better than the two big days: there are open steelband rehearsals across the city, qualifying competitions and an atmosphere that requires buying nothing.
If you want the opposite, that is the useful fact too: in March, with carnival just over, you get the driest month of the year, normal prices and a city back at its own pace.
04 May to December: rain without drama
The wet half is long and emphatic. June accumulates 243.4 millimetres, July 228.8, August 255.3 and November 222.9, with between fifteen and twenty rainy days a month.
The pattern, though, is friendly: strong afternoon showers that dump and move on, with mornings frequently clear. A morning plan and a flexible afternoon solve most days.
And there are concrete compensations. In those months the northern range is at its greenest, birdwatching is excellent and prices drop noticeably compared with the carnival season.
Here the rainiest month is not the most dangerous: it is only the wettest.
05 How to choose
If you are coming for carnival, the calendar sets your date and you must book many months ahead. If you are coming for the weather, March and April are the months with the fewest rainy days of the year, at six a month.
If you are coming for nature and do not mind getting wet, the wet half gives you the island in green and considerably cheaper. And in any case, the evening trip to the mangroves works all twelve months: the ibis come in to roost every evening of the year.
