Het weer in San Juan (Puerto Rico) in maart

March is the month San Juan-forum regulars put at the top for beach days: one of the driest of the year, warm days, nights cool enough to notice, and sun almost throughout. Their point about rain is worth carrying - unless a storm is involved it lasts minutes, not hours, and the sun is back out straight after, which is not how visitors from the mainland expect rain to behave. The tourist strip sits on the ocean with constant trade winds, which posters credit for keeping mosquitoes down. The trade-off is company: late December to April is high season, so it is busy - though regulars are firm that this is a family destination, not a spring-break one. The record: 29.5C days feeling like 32C, 22.5C nights, 7.2 precipitation days, a 26.2C sea, AQI 32.

Regulars are specific this technically counts as the wettest month of the year here, edging out August, though outside of hurricane season a shower typically clears within minutes rather than settling in for the day. Our row backs that hot, genuinely showery read, 31.4C reading as a hot 36C, over 24.3C nights, with 82.7mm of rain across 5.6 days and humidity at 78 percent. Regulars are consistent the dying trade-wind breezes this time of year can make the heat feel a touch more intense than earlier spring months despite similar temperatures. This remains a genuinely good month overall, brief widely scattered showers rather than an all-day soak the standard experience. The sea sits at a warm, swimmable 28.3C. The record: 11.5 hours of sun, an 18.9 kph wind and one of the cleanest air readings in this project, AQI 30.

April is the drier end of the year here and the board frames it as the good window - out of the rainy season, humidity down, temperatures from the low seventies to the mid eighties, which is our 30.1C over 23.3C. They put the sea around 79F and our column says 26.7C, near enough the same water. The qualification our row adds is the standard one for a Caribbean dry season: 98.5mm still falls, across 6.7 days, so the showers are quick and real rather than absent. Nor is it off season - a hard winter in the States fills the island in April. The wind runs 19.1 kph off the Atlantic. The record: humidity 77 percent, 11.3 hours of sun and AQI 33.

December opens the dry season without being dry: regulars put it at about four and a half inches and warn that the month can still be wet, adding that a wet day here is not a wet day at home. Our row says 79.8mm across 11.9 days, seven millimetres apiece, under 29.6C over 23.3C. The payoff they name is specific - less rain means less runoff, so the bioluminescent bays are clearer and the glow stronger. The cost is the calendar: the festive season from about mid-December to early January is the island's high season, and air fares, hotels and car hire all climb with it. The record: humidity 82 percent, 10.1 hours of sun, a 18.8 kph wind and a 27.7C sea.

February in San Juan is mid-80s Fahrenheit, a touch cooler than the rest of the year, and the whole forum conversation is about how to read the rain figure. Our row counts 9.5 precipitation days carrying 76.3mm, and regulars explain what that looks like on the ground: fast-moving, widely scattered showers that last minutes rather than hours, often falling in one spot while the sun is out a quarter of a mile away. Their standing complaint is that the forecast sites predict rain every day of the year here, so you would never book if you believed them - one visitor got two or three hours of rain across a whole February week. The record: 29.3C days that feel like 31C, 22.3C nights, 10.7 hours of sun and a 26.1C sea.