Curaçao Weather ATC is a live operations dashboard for the ABC Islands — Aruba, Bonaire and Curaçao — built for pilots, aviation spotters, sailors, dive operators and anyone who wants a real-time read on conditions in the southern Caribbean. It combines a live ADS-B aircraft radar, streaming air traffic control audio from Hato, Queen Beatrix and Flamingo airports, decoded METAR and TAF reports, a multi-model weather forecast, and a marine panel covering sea state, swell, wind and offshore buoy data — all refreshed automatically, all in one page. Unlike general weather apps, every figure here is sourced directly from aviation and marine authorities, not smoothed averages.
Aruba, Bonaire and Curaçao sit at roughly 12°N, just off the Venezuelan coast — far enough south and west that they lie outside the main Atlantic hurricane belt, which is why they're sometimes called the "hurricane-proof" islands even though a close pass or indirect effects (swell, rain bands) are still possible in an active season. The islands sit under the influence of the northeast trade winds almost year-round, giving steady 15–25kt winds that make them a magnet for windsurfing and kitesurfing, and keep humidity from feeling as oppressive as it would elsewhere at this latitude. The dry season runs roughly January to September, with a short wet season from October to December bringing brief, heavy tropical showers rather than prolonged rain. Sea temperatures stay in the 26–29°C range year-round.
A METAR is a routine hourly (sometimes half-hourly) surface weather report issued by an airport, encoded in a fixed format: wind direction and speed, visibility, present weather, cloud layers, temperature/dewpoint and altimeter setting. A TAF is the forecast equivalent, valid for 24–30 hours ahead. Both are summarized here with a flight category — VFR (Visual Flight Rules, good conditions), MVFR (Marginal VFR, reduced ceiling or visibility), IFR (Instrument Flight Rules required), or LIFR (Low IFR, near-minimum conditions) — a shorthand pilots use to judge, at a glance, whether visual flying is workable at Hato (TNCC), Queen Beatrix (TNCA) or Flamingo (TNCB).
The marine panel reports significant wave height, dominant swell direction and period, and wind-driven chop, then classifies the result on the WMO/Douglas sea-scale — from "calm" through "moderate" to "very rough." Wave height alone doesn't tell the whole story: a short-period wind sea feels choppier at a given height than a long-period ground swell, which is why period is shown alongside height. This is the same data mariners and dive operators use to judge whether conditions are workable for a boat trip or a shore dive.
Is this official ATC or aviation data? No — this dashboard aggregates public, third-party data sources (ADS-B Exchange, CheckWX, AviationWeather.gov, Windy, Open-Meteo, NOAA) for situational awareness only. It is not affiliated with any airport authority or air navigation service provider and must not be used for flight planning or navigation.
Why does the ATC audio sometimes go quiet? The streams are provided by LiveATC.net and depend on volunteer-run ground receivers; brief outages happen when local infrastructure or the source feed drops.
How often does the data refresh? METAR/TAF and island weather refresh automatically every few minutes; the marine and forecast panels refresh roughly every 30 minutes; the ADS-B radar and audio streams are continuous/live.
Does this work on mobile? Yes — the dashboard is a installable Progressive Web App. On iOS or Android, use your browser's "Add to Home Screen" option for an app-like experience with offline caching of the last-seen data.