Best Caribbean vacation spots if you’re trying to avoid hurricanes

The Caribbean is an enticing place to escape, especially if you’re searching for sunshine and warmth. 

Yet taking a jaunt there during the heart of hurricane season is always a bit of a risk that a major storm could crash your vacation plans. Some islands have fared better at dodging tropical systems than others. 

The FOX Forecast Center has found six islands that have become a “hurricane haven” in the last 170-plus years and have been a safe bet for vacation seekers.

“Of course, every island in the Caribbean can see hurricanes,” FOX Weather Meteorologist Michael Estime said. “However, there’s a couple of islands that are south of what we call the ‘hurricane belt’ that aren’t as prone to seeing tropical disturbances, and hurricanes and tropical systems.”

For Aruba, Bonaire, and Curaçao – sometimes colloquially known as the “ABC Islands” – it’s been more than a century since the islands have felt major hurricane impacts.

While eight hurricanes have passed within 100 miles of the islands since 1851, none of the islands have ever recorded a direct landfall. The last time any hurricane caused impacts was over 130 years ago.

The dual island chain of Trinidad and Tobago has also had fortuitous luck in dodging hurricanes. Again, only eight have passed near the islands and the only recorded hurricane landfall was from an unnamed storm in 1933.  

However, the island did feel some impacts from Hurricane Ivan in 2004 and Hurricane Emily in 2005.

San Andrés, a small island near Nicaragua, hasn’t fared quite as well as the previous five islands, but still rates in the rare category for experiencing hurricane impacts.

The FOX Forecast Center has found only two hurricanes have made landfall in their records, plus Tropical Storm Julia in 2022. Only 13 hurricanes have passed near the island, most recently was Hurricane Iota in 2020.