For most of the year, Cancun enjoys benevolent weather. In the winter months the humidity is low, the temperature peaks in the 80s and the dips to the 60s or low 70s. Blue skies and tropical breezes rule. In the summer, the humidity climbs and daytime temperatures hover in the 90s and mid-70s at night. June to October are the wettest months, but the afternoon thunderstorms are erratic, and while it may be raining in one part of the town, the beach may be spared.
Hurricanes have been spinning out of the Atlantic Ocean and into Caribbean waters and the Gulf of Mexico for hundreds of years. Christopher Columbus told of his experiences with a 1502 hurricane that devastated the island of Hispanola--21 ships were lost and 500 sailors died. The Atlantic season runs from June to the end of November, and storms are named in alphabetical order, using both male and female names. In past centuries, storms were named for the saints' days on which they struck; for example, Hurricane San Felipe struck Puerto Rico on September 13, 1876.
Gilbert began as most Atlantic tropical storms and hurricanes do, as a tropical wave off the coast of Africa on September 3, 1988--11 days later it struck just south of Cancun with peak winds of 185 mph and record low pressure in its core. The Category 5 storm already had caused massive damage to Haiti when it struck rural areas just south of the main resort area. While it weakened to a Catgeory 2 storm as it emerged on Yucatan's eastern coast, it gained steam again and came ashore on the Mexican Gulf Coast, where flooding caused many deaths. The storm eventually spawned tornadoes in Texas and spread flooding rains as far away as the American Midwest. Mexico suffered 202 deaths out of the 318 total deaths Gilbert caused in the region.
Wilma was the most devastating storm, in terms of property damage, to strike Cancun. Coming at the end of a catastrophic year for Atlantic storms, including Hurricane Katrina, Wilma was a slow-moving monster, and came ashore on October 21 with winds clocked at 185 mph. Fortunately, the death count was low--just four deaths in Mexico--but her slow movement and high winds inflicted a lot of damage on Cancun. Wilma then moved north into the Gulf, took a sharp right and headed to southern Florida, where the damage was estimated at $16.8 billion.
Just as Katrina left its psychic and physical mark on New Orleans, Wilma was also a devastating experience for Cancun's tourism-based economy. Cancun had been created out of a fishing village in 1974 to become a world-famous resort area. With her infrastructure and luxury hotels damaged or destroyed, political and business leaders pledged to rebuild. They did, adding new luxury hotels, three new PGA courses and marinas. The new hotels were built to withstand Category 5 hurricanes.
Cancun does not get a major storm every year, and not all storms are epic in scale. There have been several smaller storms in recent years--Hurricanes Roxanne in 1995, Isidore in 2002, Dean in 2007 and Gustav in 2008. Sometimes, the storms bring much-welcomed rain to replenish underground aquifers, but flooding and power losses, tornadoes and wind damage can accompany even low-level hurricanes. Visitors should monitor all tropical storm activity during the storm season and heed travel warnings.
While written records and recollections of storms go back to Christopher Colombus' time, there is little known about storms before that. Scientists are now looking at tree rings, marsh core samples and stalagmites for evidence of hurricane activity over the last 5,000 years in the Caribbean. Hurricane rains have a different isotopic chemical makeup that can be identified in wood and stone. Stalagmites in Yucatecan limestone caves are yielding evidence of past storm patterns.
