Climate

The climate in Phuket is tropical, but the typical rain forests are rare. I guess there were more of them here once. The weather differs on the east side compared to the west side. The popular beaches are situated on the west coast separated from the east by a chain of high mountains reaching from Rawai Beach to Surin Beach. According to my experience this part is dryer than east of the mountains and north of Surin Beach. Some statistics might help:

Thus the rain period of mid April to end of October is more obvious on the east side. The total over the year is about as in Malaysia but differs significantly during January to March when Phuket has a dry period.  The weather statistics from Phuket is not very significant. Each year I spend 14 days in September just to experience the rain but both 2004 and 2005 were a disappointment - too little rain. But during the months November and December 2007 enough rain fell to safeguard the fresh water dam 'Bang Wat Dam'. Read about this dam under Phuket Town: 

A new dam is now built in the Thalang district in Srisoonthorn (year 2008) it has a capacity of 7.2 cubic meters and will be half full in January 2009. 

During September I use to bike about 100 km/day. I start in Kata and climb the hill. On the way down on the other side I get a first view over the weather and thus I can direct my tour to some big cumulus on the way over the mountains. In that way I experience more rain than stationary people. I think I have found that some big cumulus are created in northwest over the sea and then move in a southeast direction. Some other are created when the wind sweeps over the mountains from east to west. 

The heavy rains can sometimes create flood in spite of a very well developed drainage system in Phuket. The picture below shows such a case in the Chalong roundabout:

The two men you see here are no bathing enthusiasts although they look very happy. Oh no, they try to find the thing that blocked the drainage. This is one of my dearest pictures. It is something of Phuket in a nutshell. Make the imagination trip and analyse each detail in the picture and you will find more than thousand words.

I like this picture too. My father should have loved it. He was a weather prophet and studied thunderclouds with a big interest. He told me how to recognize a thunder hood. This is something which often appears on top of a thundercloud and then slowly falls down like a ring around the cloud. If that is what we can see on the picture it is, however, not typical thunder hoods since they are slanting. Some minutes later they had slipped down sideways.

An other nice picture is the following, where I (not in the picture) and my wife were trapped on a small and nice restaurant, when the gates of Heaven opened. No problems for us we were well protected - only some few drops came inside our collars. To the left a nice American couple was sitting:

Morning time in the tropics you may hear the Phut-phut bird (or the rain bird as some people say). She is singing in a melancholic monotonous sound pu-pu-pu-pu-pu-pu-pu-pu. The Thai name for this bird is Nok Kapod. In school the children learn to sing about her:

Nok Kapod taa deng

nam heng khow taai

pu-pu-pu-pu-pu-pu-pu-pu

which means: The rain bird has red eyes, without water she'll die.

Here is a mail I got from Chiang Mai:

Hello Knut,

Thanks for your inquiry about the Phut-phut bird [Lesser Coucal - Centropus bengalensis'.  I live in Chiang Mai, in a rather undeveloped section and I have the pleasure of listening to these birds every day.  Love their haunting sound.  They are somewhat shy and I don't see them very often.  But when I do, oh what a pleasure. 

In fact I saw one this morning drinking out of one of the large water lily bowls in the garden, but when I returned with my camera it had vanished.  I can send you a photo, but it is only a scanned photo from my bird book.  The colour in the photo is not very good in that what appears to be a redish-brown, is really a rich brown without the reddish overtones.  However I shall keep the camera handy and take a proper photo to send you when the opportunity arises.

Regards,

Gordon Stefanik
Chiang Mai, Thailand

Talking about flying objects in Thailand there is one very beautiful butterfly - Golden Birdwing - which is threatened with extinction, why maybe I should not refer to the following home-page where you will find a picture showing the bird nailed in a box: http://www.butterflyutopia.com/golden_birdwing.html. To see her flying is a pleasur. Unlike other butterflys she flies like bird.  

Certainly you are interested of the wheather, so visit the Phuket Forcast and note that here they do not talk about 'risk of rain' instead they say 'chans of rain' - I like that.

A relativ to the wheather is the tide, which may look as follows at full moon in Phuket (Ko Taphao Noi - see the map on the start page):

Many times it is imported to be informed about the tides. It may be a departing from a shallow water, entrance to and exit from caves or such a simple thing as where I choose a sun chair.

I and many other people like to wake up early in the mornings and run in the hard wet sand along the beach. That is particularly best in low tide, which occurs when moon is full or empty. A good program for getting information about tides is the following:

As a good alternative you can get tables from Phuket Gazette.

One of the warmest months in Phuket is April. The 13th in this month Thai people celebrates the New Year according to their calendar. From that day until our new year you should add 543 to the year in the western calendar to get the Thai year. The Thai New Year is called:

Songkran

This day, which usually is very warm the heat is, however, not so oppressive. Everybody throw water on each other. No one is dry and the water availability is unlimited. Scoops, tubes, bowls, buckets, barrels, water canons and water pistols are abundant. If you pour a barrel of water over a Thai people he or she responds with a smile and a thank you. It is so nice to be wet all the day. This very good habit starts on some places the night before. In Bangkok wetting continues a whole week. 

In the Thai mythology there are holy snakes so-called Nagas spurting water and hereby create rain. These very beautiful creatures are often found outside the temples.

If you want to see more about the weather I recommend: The weather in Phuket

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