Best Time to Dive Roatán and Utila: Honduras Diving Season by Month

Roatán and Utila diving conditions by month

The Bay Islands lie off the north coast of Honduras, and their sea hardly changes: about 3°C separates the coolest month from the warmest. Rain, wind direction and the chance of a tropical storm change instead. Roatán is the island most US divers fly to, with direct flights from Houston, Miami, Atlanta and Denver listed on PADI's West End page. Utila, the smaller island to the west, is known for whale sharks. If you are still choosing a region, our month-by-month destination list shows where else is in season.

Each month in the table has two sea temperatures. The lower one is the monthly mean from NOAA Coral Reef Watch's Honduras station, a satellite average over the reefs of Honduras's Caribbean coast between 15.6°N and 17.7°N, Bay Islands included, built from 1985-2012 data and adjusted to a late-1980s baseline. The higher one is seatemperature.info's Roatán average for the past 10 years, from satellite and in-situ data. The newer figure is warmer in every month, by 0.5-0.9°C.

Air temperatures are our averages of NOAA's daily summaries for Roatán's airport, Juan Manuel Gálvez International, for 2015-2024. Rain is a range. The low figure is the same airport record, and the high one is weather2travel's long-term average, processed from Climatic Research Unit (CRU) data at the University of East Anglia. They differ by almost a factor of two over a year (1,418 mm against 2,723 mm). The airport has few reports between 01:00 and 05:00, so its totals may run low, while CRU's figure is a grid average, not an island gauge. Both put the driest months in April and May and the wettest in October and November.

Wind is the mean of NOAA's hourly airport reports between 09:00 and 17:00 local time for 2015-2024, with the share of reports in which it blew from the north (north-west to north-east). Storms are the tropical storms and hurricanes whose centre passed within 150 km (81 nautical miles) of Roatán in NOAA's HURDAT2 best-track record for 1950-2025, counted by us. The suit column applies our wetsuit thickness chart to one dive: a 3mm at 24-27°C, with a 5mm for divers who run cold, and a 3mm or shorty at 28°C and above.

Wet season and northers: October to February

From October to February the islands get more rain and the wind swings round to the north. PADI's West End page calls October through February the windier and rainier months, and says the hills of Roatán mean that when one side of the island is windy and choppy, the other side is calm. In a north wind, the calm side is the south, whose reefs look very different from the north side's, as the page points out.

The airport reports show the shift. From June to August only 10-13% of daytime reports had the wind from the north, and the average was 11-13 knots, mostly the east trade wind. In November the northerly share was 35%, in October 29% and in January 28%. Days with at least three daytime hours of northerly wind at 10 knots or more averaged 1.3-2.1 a month from November to March, and 0.3-1.1 a month for the rest of the year. The airport is on the south coast, so it probably understates a norther that the north shore takes head on.

Rain follows the same calendar. On the airport record, October to January averaged 11-15 days a month with 1 mm or more of rain, against 2-5 days from March to June. None of this makes the wet season cold: the sea peaks in September and October at 28.6-29.8°C (83-86°F), and even January to March average 26.3-27.1°C.

Hurricane season in the Bay Islands

The Atlantic hurricane season runs from 1 June to 30 November. NOAA's National Hurricane Center puts the peak on 10 September, with most activity between mid-August and mid-October. Around Roatán the risk runs later. In our count of NOAA's best-track data, 26 tropical storms and hurricanes passed within 150 km of the island between 1950 and 2025, in 21 of those 76 seasons. Nine came in September, seven in October and four in November, so October and November together outnumber September. None came between December and May, and 12 were at hurricane strength while inside the circle.

The worst was Mitch, in October 1998. The Hurricane Center's report says its centre passed very near Guanaja as a category five hurricane, though winds of that strength were unlikely on the island, then meandered near the north coast of Honduras before landfall. Roatán logged 10.65 inches (270 mm) of rain between 25 and 31 October, and the flooding killed more than nine thousand people, mainly in Honduras and Nicaragua. The most recent storm inside our circle was Tropical Storm Sara in November 2024.

A storm does not have to hit the island to cancel dives: boats stay in when the sea builds, and flights stop. If you book between August and November, read what your policy pays when weather cuts a trip short; our dive insurance guide explains what dive cover and travel cover each handle.

Best months to dive Roatán and Utila for your goal

No month is closed, so start from what matters most to you:

• Settled weather: March to June. The airport record has its fewest rain days (2-5 a month), northerly winds are at their rarest, and no tropical storm has passed within 150 km in March, April or May since 1950. June has one, Tropical Storm Alex in 2010.
• Calm seas on the north side and around West End: the same months. PADI's blog names the dry season, March to September, as the best time, with excellent visibility, calmer seas and clear skies.
• Visibility: PADI's West End page says it averages around 30 m (100 ft) for most of the year. Dive The World gives 20-30 m (65-100 ft) for Utila, clearest from March to May and again from September to November.
• Warmest water: August to October, at 28.5-29.8°C (83-86°F). This is also the core of the storm season.
• Whale sharks at Utila: March and April on the longest data set, though sightings come in every month and vary a lot from year to year. See the next section.
• Cayos Cochinos: we found no published diving season. The managing foundation runs its boats from La Ceiba, and Dive The World says a liveaboard is the practical way to add the cays to Roatán and Utila in one week. Pick the calm months above.

Utila whale shark season: when sightings peak

Whale sharks can appear off Utila in any month, but there is no dependable season. The longest data set is a 2013 study in the Journal of Fish Biology by Fox and colleagues: 479 encounters at Utila between 1999 and 2011, and 95 individual sharks identified. Sightings came in every month, and 47.3% of unique encounters fell in March and April. Trips that saw nothing were not reported, so the authors could not correct for effort, and they describe Utila as lacking a well-defined season, with large swings from year to year.

Other sources stretch the peak in different directions. PADI's blog gives March to May and August to October, and Dive The World gives February to April and October to December. The study links sightings to feeding tuna: most encounters were sharks feeding at the surface in a tuna boil, usually one dominated by blackfin tuna. Most sightings came from the north side near the edge of the continental shelf, 55% of them off the north-east corner. Nearly every Honduran sighting in the database was from Utila; only three came from Roatán.

Luck counts for a lot. The Whale Shark and Oceanic Research Center (WSORC) on Utila has collected sighting data since 1997, and in September 2025 it reported the first sighting of that year, adding that such encounters used to be more common. WSORC also wrote the island's encounter guidelines, which it says were passed into Honduran law in 2008, and it reports that encounters last minutes instead of seconds when boats respect them. Its advice is to give a feeding shark space and leave it undisturbed, so ask your boat crew to brief the rules before anyone gets in.

Where to dive: Roatán's north and south sides, Utila, Cayos Cochinos and Guanaja

PADI's blog says most of Roatán's dive centres are on the west side, with sites all round the island. El Aguila is the best-known wreck in the islands; for wrecks elsewhere, see our wreck diving destinations. Sources give its length as 230 ft (Reef Smart Guides and DeeperBlue) or 250 ft (PADI's blog), so about 75 m.

Marine park fees, reef rules and reef health

All four Bay Islands municipalities (Utila, Roatán, Santos Guardiola and Guanaja) lie inside the Bay Islands National Marine Park, declared on 10 June 2010. The Roatan Marine Park, a community nonprofit, says it covers 647,153 ha and is the largest marine protected area in Honduras. Its fee on Roatán is voluntary: $10, for an RMP bracelet or token from its EcoStore in West End or partner dive shops and resorts. RMP is also asking Roatán's municipality to ban sunscreens with six petrochemicals, oxybenzone and octinoxate among them, so bring a reef-safe one.

Cayos Cochinos charges admission at its welcome centre on Cayo Menor. The foundation lists $10 plus tax for non-residents arriving with a certified tour operator, $20 plus tax for private non-resident visits and $5 plus tax for Honduran residents. Fees change, so check before you go. Its visitor guidelines ask divers not to touch or stand on coral, to keep a safe distance from marine life and not to feed or chase animals.

The Bay Islands are part of the Mesoamerican Reef, which PADI's blog calls the second-largest barrier reef in the world and which runs through Mexico, Belize, Guatemala and Honduras. The 2024 report card from Healthy Reefs for Healthy People gave the whole reef 2.5 out of 5, a Poor grade, although reef health improved for the first time in five years. Roatán and Utila each scored 2.8 (Fair), Guanaja 3.0 and Cayos Cochinos 3.3, tied for the highest score on the reef. The report's press release says coral cover in Honduras fell 3%, probably because of bleaching.

Heat stress changes from year to year, and it peaks after the warmest months. NOAA Coral Reef Watch runs a Honduras station that publishes a daily bleaching alert level. At its Alert Level 2, NOAA says severe, widespread bleaching and significant coral mortality are likely. Check the station before an autumn trip, and if you find bleached coral, give it extra room.