TravelTalkOnline Forums Travel and Vacation Forums St. Maarten - St. Martin 2023-04-05 Storms approaching at Noon

Just a heads-up for anyone on the island and thinking about going to the beach or doing something outside. There's a strong front approaching that will most likely hit St. Martin dead-center with winds, lightning and rain in about 3 hours or so. I'm going to let out more chain and secure the boat, but with all that lightning I wouldn't want to be outside.
The picture attached comes from a cool website which shows lightning activity worldwide in REAL TIME! (well, perhaps 3-10 second delay), it is Live Lightning in real time

Thanks for posting. Be careful out there folks!

We are presently at royal palm and its a nice day. Is there someone or somewhere on the island we could call about weather? We “were” going to orient-now wondering if we should?

There are numerous weather sites you can consult. You can look at the lightning site I linked to, and google "St. Martin Radar weather" to get live radar precipitation reports. Even the NOAA satellite images contain this front. It won't be a major thing and most likely shortlived; but if you do go to a beach keep an eye out to the east for dark clouds and make sure to get under cover before those clouds arrive. I've been a pilot and flew gliders and sailed oceans and think I'm pretty knowledgeable about the weather, probably a bit more than a concierge at a resort Just looking at the clouds here right now and feeling the strong breeze, and not having seen the lightning site, I would say that we were in for some rain as a cold front passes. One just never knows ahead of time how strong it'll be or even if it misses St. Martin completely (and hits Anguilla...).

Just keep an eye out on the weather and don't get surprised, that's all I wanted to post.

Hi there! Thanks so much for your words. Winds do seem to pick up a bit more. We will have an eye out😉

The situation looks better now - the lighting is on the far side and the front is still 100 miles away. At about 25MPH at those altitudes, that's going to be around 14:00 before anything arrives here. Enjoy your day at the beach

Thanks again. We made a group decision to stay on west side of island and maybe enjoy karackter beach bar today😊

I just waved, did you see me?

We're headed to Simpson Bay for the opening of a new Pub! Let it rain, we need it badly!

https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=10160692421001136&set=a.10151209531521136

I had planned on going to the opening today as well! It might happen, but right now I'm going to wait aboard until the front has passed.
I've attached the most recent infrared satellite image and highlighted St. Martin in red. Prevailing winds aloft are NE to ENE so we might get "missed"

Here's a really cool link showing a timelapse cloud cover. You can see the lower layers of the storm east of St. Martin and normally they would have reached the island, but the upper level winds are from the west and keeping the frontal boundary away.

Zoom Earth St. Martin satellite weather time lapse