British Virgin Islands weather, month by month

The best time to visit the British Virgin Islands is February or March, when the islands are at their driest, the nights at their coolest and the storm record is empty. The quiet weeks of August to October are the other side of it: the warmest sea of the year, and nearly all of the storm risk.

British Virgin Islands weather through the year

The British Virgin Islands publish no climate normals, so the numbers on this page are our read: the ERA5 reanalysis for Road Town over 1991 to 2020, corrected month by month against NOAA's normals at the Cyril E. King airport gauge on St. Thomas, 35 km west, the nearest station with a published record. The table above says the same in its caption. What it shows is a year that barely moves in temperature and moves a great deal in everything else: six degrees separate the coolest afternoon from the hottest, while the wettest month brings more than three times the rain of the driest.

One row stands for the group. Tortola, Virgin Gorda, Jost Van Dyke and Anegada lie within about 65 km of one another end to end, and the same trade wind crosses all of them from the east, so the difference between a north-shore bay on Tortola and the flat of Anegada on a given morning is one of shelter and swell, which the beach pages read each day, not one of climate.

The tradeoff that organizes the year: the dry months are the cool-water months and the storm-free months, and the warm-water months are the wet months and the storm months. The rate column of the table fills in as British Virgin Islands owners list their houses here; across The Narrows on the US islands, the same dry months carry the year's highest rates.

December in the BVI: the trades come back

December is the turn. The autumn rain falls away by more than half, the winter trades come back, and the sea in Sir Francis Drake Channel still holds the summer's warmth. On a deck that faces east, the trades are the difference between a warm evening and a close one.

One tropical system has passed within 100 km of Road Town in December in 34 seasons, Olga in 2007, a subtropical storm that never reached hurricane strength. December suits a family tied to the school calendar, and anyone who can take the first two weeks instead of the second, which have the same sky and fewer people under it.

January to March, the best time to visit the BVI

These three months carry the surest weather in the group. February and March are the driest of the year and January only a shade wetter, and the nights are the coolest the year gets, which here means a light layer after dark and nothing more.

The sea is at its coolest too, in February. This is also the season of the winter swell from the north: a bay that opens north takes it and one that opens south sits out of it, and each beach page reads which is which every morning from the wave model at its pin.

No tropical system has come within 100 km of Road Town in these three months in the 34 seasons on record. Suits anyone whose dates are fixed and whose first question is whether it will rain: on this record it mostly will not.

April and May in the BVI: dry, and warmer

April keeps most of the dry season, with the year's fewest wet days. May turns warmer, the sea with it, and the rain begins to come back. Nothing in the storm record touches either month.

Suits a couple or a family who can travel outside the school calendar and want the dry season's beaches with the sea three degrees warmer than February's.

June and July in the BVI: hot and mostly dry

The hurricane season opens on June 1 by the National Hurricane Center's calendar, and June shows almost none of it: it is drier than May. July, with August the hottest month of the year, stays nearly as dry, and the sea keeps warming.

In 34 seasons one tropical system has passed within 100 km of Road Town in these two months, Hurricane Bertha in July 1996. The National Hurricane Center puts the first hurricane of an average season in early to mid August and most of the season's activity between mid August and mid October, and this record agrees. Suits anyone who wants the anchorages and the beaches with room on them and will buy travel insurance at the deposit, before any storm has a name.

August to October: Road Town's storm months

This is where the record's risk lives. Of the 19 tropical systems that passed within 100 km of Road Town in the 34 seasons from 1991 to 2024, 17 came in August, September and October, as did 8 of the 9 that were hurricanes at the time. The closest was Irma, on September 6, 2017, 21 km from Road Town with sustained winds of 173 mph at that point in the National Hurricane Center's best-track record; Dorian passed 51 km off on August 28, 2019, and Gonzalo 99 km off on October 14, 2014. The peak of the Atlantic season is September 10.

The ordinary day in these months is summer's: the hottest afternoons, the warmest sea of the year and rain that climbs month by month. Even October, the month with the most wet days of the three, leaves two dry days for every wet one.

The odds on any one week stay small: in 25 of those 34 seasons no hurricane came within 100 km of Road Town. What changes is the planning: insurance bought before a storm is named, a house whose owner will say plainly what happens if one is, and flights that can move. Suits a couple who can book late and move their dates, not a wedding party. The hurricane season page has the policy wording to look for.

November in the BVI: the wettest month, no storms

November is the wettest month on the record, and the one that proves the storm season and the wet season are different things: no tropical system has passed within 100 km of Road Town in November in 34 seasons. St. John's record across The Narrows holds one, Lenny in 1999, which stayed more than 100 km from Road Town. The heat eases and the sea stays warm.

Suits a reader who wants December's sky a few weeks early, will take the odd shower for it, and would rather book before the holiday fortnight fills.

What a wet month means on Tortola

A wet day in the table is any day with a tenth of an inch or more, and November, the wettest month, has nine of them and twenty-one dry ones; March has five. November's 6.0 inches over nine wet days is two thirds of an inch per wet day, a shower's worth. A day lost to rain from morning to night is what a tropical system brings, and the record above says how often one has.

One caution our method carries. A reanalysis cell 25 km wide reads the sea as much as the land, and Tortola's ridge wrings more rain from the trade wind on its north side than any such cell can show, so a villa high on the island or facing north should expect more than the table and a flat island like Anegada less. The gauge we corrected to sits at sea level on the south shore of St. Thomas, and so does Road Town.

When to visit Tortola, Virgin Gorda and the other islands

For the surest weather, February or March: the driest record, the coolest nights and no storms. For the dry season's weather later and warmer water, April into May. For the islands quiet with a small and insurable risk, June and July. For the warmest sea, the emptiest beaches and the season's real risk with them, August to October, with insurance bought at the deposit and dates you can move.

Whichever month, the reading at the top of this page is today's sky over Road Town, the table is the record behind it, and the rate index will show what the villas listed here ask for the week once owners list them. The next choice is which island to stay on, and the hurricane season page says what to buy before you pay a deposit.

Every system at hurricane strength whose track came within 100 km of the island since 1989, from the National Hurricane Center’s best-track record. The distance is the closest point of the track; the wind is the sustained wind at that point.