The dry season
The dry season, which lasts from December to April, offers sunny days, particularly pleasant temperatures and little rainfall. It's also the most popular season for tourists, especially the British, American and Canadian "migratory birds" who spend the winter here. Not surprisingly, this is also the period when house prices rise.
The rainy season
July marks the start of the rainy and hurricane season. This season lasts until the end of October and is characterized by sporadic showers and periods of higher humidity. However, even during this season, sunny days are frequent and rain often falls in the form of short, refreshing tropical showers. This is also the time when housing prices drop the most, often halving or even tripling.
Located further east in the main arc of the Lesser Antilles, Barbados lies slightly outside the "hurricane corridor" and is rarely hit. Hurricane Janet, the last major hurricane to hit the island, was in 1955.
The shoulder season
Barbados has two shoulder seasons, at the transition between the dry and wet seasons. The first lasts from mid-April to June, and the second through November. This intermediate season is an excellent compromise between weather and price. The rainy season has not yet set in, or is on its way out in November as temperatures start to drop, and with the bulk of the tourists gone, accommodation becomes a little more affordable.
Victim of climate change
Unfortunately, the situation could change as a result of climate change, and Barbados is not spared. Ocean warming intensifies the power of hurricanes and widens their impact zone, putting Barbados at greater risk than it would normally be. This situation is equally worrying for the coral reef that surrounds Barbados, protecting the island from storms but also sheltering a rich ecosystem (fish, sea turtles, crustaceans...) whose existence is threatened if the reef were to bleach and die. As well as being an ecological disaster, this would seriously threaten small-scale fishing. The island is also particularly vulnerable to coastal erosion and is already experiencing increasing periods of drought, posing an increasingly serious water supply problem for the agricultural and tourism sectors. With its low relief, Barbados is also at risk of flooding.
Already, the dry season lasts longer and the first shoulder season between mid-April and June is hotter, faster.
Another visible change on the beaches this time is the increased frequency of sargassum, the brown algae that is carried by currents in the form of large slicks. Since 2011, as elsewhere in the Caribbean, they have been making regular and increasingly long-lasting appearances. Their proliferation is due to global warming and the discharge of industrial wastewater into the sea. The increase in nitrogen and phosphorus in the ocean accelerates the speed and scale of reproduction of this marine plant, depleting the oxygen in seawater and causing massive fish kills. For humans, they are not only an obstacle to fishing but also to swimming, and when they wash up on the beach, they release a rotten-egg-smelling gas that can, in some cases, cause respiratory problems. A real problem, difficult and costly to solve.
