Acts 27 recounts Paul’s shipwreck as he travels from Crete to Malta after Yom Kippur (September 24 in AD 60, approximately when this story is set). For the shipwreck portion of the voyage, his ship starts in Fair Havens on the southern of coast of Crete. They’re trying to make port in western Crete but are blown by a strong wind from the northeast. The sailors are concerned about being driven into sandbars in the gulf of Syrtis, so they let the ship be blown along and eventually end up in Malta.
On November 11, 2021, Storm Blas set up this wind pattern almost exactly, connecting Crete to Malta (the strong white line represents my interpretation of a possible path):
This wind pattern comes from the mesmerizing earth.nullschool.net, where you can also play around with an animated version. (It’s way more exciting than this static image). This image reflects a point in time, while Paul’s shipwreck narrative takes two weeks. So this wind pattern would change during the voyage; this image just happens to show the appropriate wind pattern for the whole voyage.
Arguably, the wind should blow them farther south, closer to Syrtis. Cyclone Zorbas from September 27, 2018, shows an even-more-intense flow that would take a ship nearer Syrtis. It doesn’t connect to Malta, but, again, the wind patterns would change over the course of several days.
Earlier in the story, Luke describes sailing from Sidon “under the lee of Cyprus, because the winds were against us.” Then they “sailed across the open sea along the coast of Cilicia and Pamphylia” on the way to Myra. Bible maps don’t entirely agree what “the lee of Cyprus” implies for the route (some take it to mean sailing along Cyprus’s southern coast, though that interpretation creates tension with “Cilicia and Pamphylia” to the north). This image from October 29, 2023, illustrates the lee along Cyprus’s eastern coast:
Finally, the trip from Myra to Cnidus (“with difficulty”) and then to Salmone on Crete (“the wind did not allow us to go farther”) could find an expression on October 13, 2024. In this image, the winds during the segment from Myra to Cnidus are coming from the west or northwest, against the direction of travel. The strong winds from the north through the Aegean make westward travel difficult, pushing the ship south. This wind pattern appears to be typical for this time of year.
Again, I’m not arguing that these images reflect the actual wind patterns involved in Paul’s shipwreck voyage; I’m just showing that it’s possible to find modern analogues to the winds described in the story.