Terms of use

Last updated: 2 October 2026.

This is not a safety service

Do not use this site to decide whether it is safe to enter the water. Conditions are drawn from automated NOAA feeds and may be delayed, wrong, or missing. For most listed beaches the nearest buoy is tens of kilometres away, so readings describe that buoy, not the beach you are looking at. Forecasts and condition ratings are model output, not observations. National Weather Service alerts (including rip current and beach hazard statements) are shown as NWS issues them and may be delayed or incomplete; we do not issue our own bacteria advisories or beach closures. Always follow posted signage, lifeguards, and your local authority.

Accuracy

Beach attributes come from OpenStreetMap and are often incomplete. A field reading “Not recorded” means no upstream data exists — it is not an assertion about the beach. Public access in particular should be confirmed on the ground; a listing here is not a legal determination of access rights.

Data licensing

Beach data is © OpenStreetMap contributors, available under the Open Database License. Ocean and weather observations are from NOAA (NDBC, CO-OPS) and the National Weather Service, in the public domain. Forecasts are from Open-Meteo (CC BY 4.0). Wildlife sightings are research-grade observations from iNaturalist, used under their licences and linked to each record. Radar imagery is from RainViewer; base maps from OpenStreetMap and Esri. Camera feeds belong to their respective operators and are linked, not licensed to us.

Acceptable use

The API is rate limited. Please do not scrape the full dataset through it — the underlying OpenStreetMap data is freely available from the source. No warranty is offered, and liability is limited to the extent the law allows.