USVI-On-Line

After a few years of not vacationing in St. John and having just returned I must say the islands need more rain. I stayed on the north shore of St. John and it isn't the green lush hills that I remember. Still green, but many trees and shrubs are brown and wilted. There was one day of good rain while we were there, which I was glad to see, but that was it. Those short tropical showers aren't doing the job for the poor plant life. This island, if hit by very strong winds, would lose a lot of the dead wood and may look a bit bare in some places. It really needs rain. I realize most of us visiters don't like rain while we're there, but the citizens told me they haven't had a really good rain since last November and now some fear the time is ripe for what they don't want - a storm that starts with the letter H. Anyone else notice the dry conditions in areas that used to be much more lush?

Pia the way you can dance it should be raining in no time.

Absolutely - I noticed the "browness" of the hills above Cruz Bay when we first pulled into the ferry dock. They need rain BAD. It was a bit of a downer in that we were there with my cousin who had never been, and for five years I had been telling the family that this place is lush, green, tropical, etc...Didn't spoil our trip though. I would always rather go to a "dry" St. John than any of the other, more "popular" islands (Aruba, Bahamas, Dominican, Jamaica, etc).

The dryness is not really unusual, although we've just come out of 5 years in a row of above-average rainfall--generally the "dry season" is early the year and we get rain in the spring that can carry us through the normal drought of early summer. This year we had one good rain in early April and nothing substantial since.
With many, many years of records to refer to, we can see that there is a severe (that is, prolonged--) drought at least every 15 years--too soon to say if this is one of them. With our population expanding so drastically, many residents were not here during the last one--'94-'95. The other side of this is the floods, such as April 18th, 1984-- when we got 18 inches in 14 hours!!!!