If you’re planning your week around the weather, it’s going to be windy and humid today but the real rain shows up Tuesday, and it hits hardest on the Caribbean and the Northern Zone. If your plans are on the Pacific side, your lucky since it will be drier.
Today you’ll feel the wind before you see the rain. Gusts are running 60 to 90 km/h (37 to 56 mph) across the mountains and 40 to 65 km/h (25 to 40 mph) in the lowlands, so expect it to be breezy pretty much everywhere. In the Central Valley — San José, Alajuela, Heredia, Cartago — you’ll get on-and-off drizzle through the morning under a grey, gusty sky, with a better chance of actual rain building in the afternoon and evening. The Caribbean and Northern Zone are wet from early on, with showers likely from dawn. The Pacific stays the hot, more settled side today, which makes it your best shot at sun.
Tuesday is the day to plan around. Tropical wave #24 moves through and pushes the heaviest rain of the week into the Caribbean and the Northern Zone. What makes this more than a normal wet day is the ground underneath it: soils on the Caribbean side are already saturated from the waves that rolled through earlier this month, so there’s less room to absorb a fresh soaking. That’s what raises the risk of ponding on the roads and slides on the slopes. If your week has any flexibility, treat Tuesday as the day you keep loose — especially anywhere near Limón, Puerto Viejo, Cahuita, Tortuguero, or the northern lowlands.
For beach days, the Pacific is your friend this week. Guanacaste, the Nicoya Peninsula, and the Central and South Pacific stay hotter and more stable, and mornings are your window before afternoon clouds build. Expect some haze and extra heat out there too — Saharan dust is drifting over Central America, which tends to hold the rain back and push temperatures up on the Pacific side. The Caribbean coast is the wet side of the country right now, so if you’re set on Puerto Viejo or Cahuita, aim for earlier in the week rather than Tuesday, and pack for rain either way.
Flying domestic? Book the earliest flight you reasonably can. Gusty winds and afternoon storms are exactly the conditions that bump small-aircraft schedules, and the strips most exposed to it are the ones serving the wet regions — Tortuguero, Limón, Quepos, and Drake Bay. Morning departures give you the calmest air and the best odds of leaving on time. Whatever your flight, confirm status with the airline before you head to the airport, particularly Tuesday.
Driving takes more patience this week, mostly on the routes heading to the wet side. The San José–Limón highway through Braulio Carrillo (Ruta 32) is the classic weather chokepoint — fog, reduced visibility, and rockfall on the mountain stretch — and heavy rain on already-soaked ground is when it slows down or backs up.
The Northern Zone roads carry the same risk of standing water and slides. The rule is simple: slow down, keep your headlights on, leave a bigger gap than usual, and don’t push through fast-moving water across a road. High mountain routes like Cerro de la Muerte (Ruta 2) get the strongest gusts and the thickest fog, so give those extra room too.
As for when it eases: the Pacific and Central Valley stay fairly normal and start trending drier toward the weekend, while the Caribbean holds onto the wetter pattern through midweek. Looking a little further out, forecasters expect a hotter, drier stretch to settle in around the end of the month as the second half of the canícula — the mid-summer dry spell — kicks in alongside more Saharan dust. So if this week feels grey, the payoff is a sunnier, warmer turn just ahead.
Bottom line: front-load your outdoor plans to earlier in the day and earlier in the week, favor the Pacific if you’re chasing sun, and keep Tuesday flexible if you’re anywhere near the Caribbean or the Northern Zone.
