Anyone care to comment on the weather forecast for the next few months? I know that the El Nina pattern effects are expected to continue....but I'm having a hard time finding really good info. Thanks in advance, and cheers.

Daniel, first off, welcome to Bonaire Talk.

The weather this year has been way off the norm...very wet...but still no snow

What will take place down there is a big guess at best.

It does seem to be raining less each day.

The rain seems to pass through pretty quickly. It is nothing worth giving much thought too or stressing out over. When the sun is out (and it is out quite a lot) it is hot. The clouds can be a bit of relief every once in a while.

Thanks much for the responses. My wife and I will be making our 6th trip to Bonaire during the last week of January and the first week of February. I'm easy-come easy go with the weather, because I know what the baseline is and that I'll be back soon. However, we've invited my brother in-law and his wife down for a week and I'm naturally worried about them having a good time. They dont have much and have been saving up for and anticipating the trip for nearly 2 years.

Outside of that, I'm just sort of curious. Folks in the states are seemingly obsessed with weather and any variance outside of the norm anywhere in the country is likely to make the national news. It seemed to me that the El Nina pattern in the Southern Caribbean was, by comparison, much more interesting if not 'news worthy'. Its been hard to find any info about the history of this pattern in that part of the world and what models might predict for the coming months.

Dan..If you want to know about the weather, just check some of the on line cams on island. I just checked & it looks like a beautiful morning in our favorite place!
And some cloud cover is always a good thing on Bonaire! I see absolutely no need to worry.

Just for the record, and in case anyone wants to look up details, it is El Niño and La Niña. The first is from the Peruvian name for the phenomenon, because it often came at Christmas time, and El Niño is the Christ Child. La Niña is the opposite part of the cycle, hence The Little Girl. Sometimes in the scientific literature the whole cycle is called ENSO, for El Niño/Southern Oscillation.

Sites like http://www.pmel.noaa.gov/tao/elnino/nino-home.html give lots of info on the whole thing, and on how it is observed and predicted.

During El Niño, Bonaire typically has a dryer winter than the average, but wetter than the average during La Niña (like now). Some research suggests La Niña times may produce more and stronger hurricanes.