The Jamaica Beach Weather Observatory was established on December 1, 1990 and is an official cooperative weather observation station of the United States National Weather Service. We are located along the upper Texas coast on the western part of Galveston Island in the city of Jamaica Beach, Texas.  The weather observatory is directly adjacent to West Bay (part of the Galveston Bay complex) and 1¼ mile from the Gulf of Mexico on the opposite side of the island.

Our primary mission is to provide the local coastal community with detailed weather, climatological and tide data from a profesionally equipped meteorological observation station and to support the National Weather Service in their efforts to issue timely and accurate weather forecasts, watches and warnings for Galveston Island and the adjacent coastal waters.  The daily statistical data generated by this weather station also contributes invaluable scientific information needed for long-term climatological and oceanic research studies including the impact from tropical cyclones, mitigation of coastal erosion and the progress of rising sea levels due to global climate change. We hope you enjoy your visit to our website!

1.  All times are indicated in Central Standard Time (CST) throughout the entire year for standardized weather reporting purposes. To convert CST to Coordinated Universal Time (UTC), add 6 hours (i.e. 1200 CST is 1800 UTC). Whenever Daylight Savings Time is in effect (March-October), you must add 1 hour to the times displayed for the actual local time in Central Daylight Time (CDT).

2.  Whenever the sky condition/present weather icon is missing from the upper righthand corner of the observation window, the weather observer is temporarily not on duty at the weather station.  However, the meteorological instruments will still record and display weather data continuously 24 hours a day.

3.  The official precipitation total for the station is the stick measurement manually read from the National Weather Service Standard Rain Gauge (SRG). Therefore, amounts recorded by the electronic Tipping Bucket Rain Gauge (TBRG) shown above are occasionally edited to correspond to those recorded in the SRG. During the fall and winter months, water droplets from heavy fog may deposit enough moisture in the TBRG to cause it to falsely register 0.01 of an inch of rainfall. This does not officially count as precipitation and is later edited out of the daily, monthly and annual totals for the station.

4.  The weather observation automatically updates every minute with new data.  If the observation does not update and status below shows "NORMAL", it means that communication to the Internet has been temporarily disrupted or there has been an unexpected power or phone line outage at the weather station.

Present Weather Station Operating Status:  NORMAL