Are conditions good, or bad? These are the websites I use when I'm planning a dive trip.

Coming soon: How to read each site and compare the sites for each area. Always check the dates on the sites; broken sites may have old data!

Let me know if you have a favorite site that's not listed here!

Conditions

Entire Area

• Chuck Tribolet's Monterey Bay Sea Conditions (his discussion of how to read them is also useful)
• Coastal Data Information Program
• Facebook - Monterey County Dive Reports
• DiveCalif (a consolidation of several other forecast sites in frames)
• Monterey Health Department (water quality and beach advisories)
• NOAA Near-Shore Wave Prediction System charts (wave height, wind speed, swell, current)
• NOAA Tides and Currents
• Solspot (5-day surf forecast)
• Surfer.com (wave forecast)
• TempBreak (look at Latest Chloro 3 Day Composite for algae levels)
• Tideschart (tides and weather)
• Weather Underground (10-day forecast)
• WillyWeather (tide times and heights)

Monterey Bay

(Monterey State Beach, San Carlos Beach, McAbee Beach, Lovers Point, Coral Street)

• NOAA buoy 46240 (off Lovers Point) has swell size and direction
• NOAA buoy 46098 (middle of Monterey Bay) and NOAA station MEYC1 (on municipal wharf) have water temp and wind
• NOAA Near-Shore Wave Prediction System (times are UTC*) (alternate site, Hanson plot from 46236)
• NOAA WaveWatch bulletin (text format, times are UTC*)
• NOAA Weather Forecast (check for small craft advisory)
• SOFAR spotter buoy off McAbee Beach
• SwellInfo (kinda flaky/unreliable; may be missing data)
• WillyWeather (swell forecasts for San Carlos Beach and south, Lovers Point and north)
• Windy (swells; the waves and winds tabs are also useful)

*NOAA predictions use UTC; subtract 8 hours (or 7 hours if daylight saving time) to get local time. This has the effect of shifting the data left (or the time axis right). For example, if NWPS shows a peak swell in Monterey bay at 11 pm Saturday, it's actually at 3 pm or 4 pm Saturday. That makes sense, because wind waves are highest in the afternoon. You can also look at the historical wave data from the corresponding buoy, which has both GMT/UTC and local time.

Carmel Area

(Stillwater Cove Monastery Beach, Point Lobos)

• Magic Seaweed surf report for Carmel Beach (happy surfers = sad divers)
• NOAA buoy 46239 (off Big Sur)
• NOAA Near-Shore Wave Prediction System (times are UTC*) (alternate site, Hanson plot)
• NOAA WaveWatch bulletin (text format, times are UTC*)
• NOAA Weather Forecast (check for small craft advisory)
• SwellInfo (kinda flaky/unreliable; may be missing data)
• WillyWeather (swell forecast)
• Windy (swells)

Webcams

• Adventures By The Sea (Monterey State Beach, Harbor, and San Carlos Beach)
  • If the boat masts are rocking wildly in the harbor, it means there will be surge (even if it's calm at the surface).
  • If there's sea foam at the point on the breakwater side, vis is likely to be less than 3'.
    

    

  • If you can see whitecaps in the distance, there will be surge and lower vis in the shallows along the wall.
• A Taste of Monterey (Cannery Row)
• Carmel ClamCam (Carmel)
• Fish Hopper (McAbee Beach)
• Monterey Bay Aquarium (Cannery Row)
• Pebble Beach (Stillwater Cove)
• Portola Hotel Webcam (Monterey Harbor)
• Tickle Pink Inn (Carmel)

Old Sites

Sometimes it's helpful to know what sites don't work anymore.

• SOFAR spotter buoy off Point Joe, (aka Bobby McBuoyFace). This broke loose in big swells in January 2023, traveling as far north as Mendocino before heading back south and disappearing 120 miles off the Monterey coast a month later.