Love Island USA Season 8 debuted this week. My daughter hosted a watch party with her friends for the first episode. If you have been living under a rock, Love Island USA is a massively popular reality show that airs on Peacock. The show, based on a British series with the same name, originated on CBS but has enjoyed cult-like success on Peacock . My daughter shared an Instagram post from my colleagues at The Weather Channel having a little weather-related fun with the casts. Of course, it prompted me to think about the weather, climate and other Earth science fun facts associated with Love Island USA Season 8.

Love Island USA Season 8, like the previous three seasons, has been filmed in Fiji’s Mamanuca Islands. If that sounds familiar, CBS also films its iconic reality series Survivor in the same location. The Tom Hanks movie Cast Away was also filmed there. So what’s the weather like there?

“Located south of the equator, Fiji boasts a warm, comfortable sub-tropical climate. The average daily temperature consistently sits between about 26 to 31 degrees Celsius,” according to the Tourism Fiji website . For those of us in the United States that is 79 to 88 degrees Fahrenheit. The website went on to say, “Evenings in the cooler months can get slightly chillier, but even in the peak summer months it doesn’t get unbearably hot.” There are basically two seasons, winter and summer.

Summer spans from November to April and is considered the wet season. It features convective downpours, higher humidity, and warm days. Love Island USA is currently filming during the winter season, which spans from May to October. During this time, it is relatively dry and sunny. Coastal areas often feature cool evenings and may require light jackets, according to Tourism Fiji . Water temperatures do not fluctuate very much at all throughout the year.

Wait, how is it winter when many viewers are watching during the summer? Fiji is located in the Southern Hemisphere, so it is transitioning to winter as the Northern Hemisphere transitions to summer. It sits in the southern Pacific Ocean or Oceania and is a chain or archipelago of 332 islands roughly 17 degrees of latitude south of the equator. It is also one of the easternmost countries on the planet relative to the International Date Line. “Fiji is located about two-thirds of the way from Hawaii to New Zealand, and immediate neighbors include Vanuatu, Tonga, and Samoa,” according to the globalEdge website.

The chain of islands was created by volcanic activity over 150,000,000 years ago. Three prominent Fijian volcanoes include Taveuni, Koro, and Babukelevu. All of which have been dormant in recent years. Another geologic “fun fact” is that a remote artesian aquifer on the island of Viti Levu is the source of Fiji’s top export. Fiji Water is high in electrolytes and other natural minerals.

Let’s get back to weather. One additional reason networks may choose the Mamanuca Islands of Fiji is that it lies in a “rain shadow” created by the mountains on Viti Levu. What does that mean? Humid winds are lifted over the mountains to produce rainfall, but the Mamanuca islands are starved of moisture, which produces sunny, dry conditions. Rain shadows are common near mountain terrain around the world.