LIVE CAMERA NETWORK
Atmospheric River Watch — The West Coast, Live
An El Niño winter is setting up wet and stormy. Watch the coast the storms hit first — live cameras from Puget Sound to San Diego, all season. Free, no signup.
The West Coast's wet season runs on atmospheric rivers, and the winter ahead is shaping up wet: forecasters say an intensifying El Niño is setting up a stormy season, with the first powerful atmospheric rivers expected within a few weeks and the recurring threat running through January and February. This page is the season-long watch — live public cameras from Puget Sound to San Diego, arranged north to south in the order the storms arrive: 573 around Seattle, 626 around Portland, 342 around San Francisco Bay, and walls for the North Coast, Sacramento, the Sierra passes, Los Angeles and San Diego below. Every feed is free to watch, no signup.
An atmospheric river is exactly what it sounds like: a river in the sky, a narrow corridor of tropical moisture thousands of kilometres long. When one points at the coast and stalls, the coastal ranges and the Sierra Nevada wring it out — valley flooding on one side of the range, blizzard snowfall on the other, and mudslide risk wherever a recent burn scar meets saturated soil. The remnants of Hurricane Rachel already flooded Southern California earlier in October, on a day Las Vegas recorded its wettest October on record; that was the overture, not the season.
The cameras are the ground truth underneath the forecasts. Harbor and bayshore feeds show the surf and the water level as a system arrives; river-corridor and bridge cameras show the valleys answering hours later; the Sierra pass cameras show the rain-snow line deciding, storm by storm, whether this one is a flood event or a snowpack event. Both matter — California's reservoirs and its flood control are the same system viewed from different ends.
One discipline applies everywhere on this page: cameras show conditions, they do not issue warnings. Flood watches, warnings and evacuation orders come from the National Weather Service and local emergency agencies. Check them first, watch second — and never drive through floodwater.
Official warnings come first
Flood watches, warnings and evacuation orders are issued by the National Weather Service and local emergency agencies — not by any camera site. Check the current warning for your exact location before you travel, and never drive through flooded roads: a foot of moving water can float a car.
Seattle & Puget Sound
573 cameras within 30 km of downtown Seattle — the waterfront, the ship canal, the floating bridges and the freeway corridors where the northern storm track makes landfall.
Loading live cameras…Fetching the live index for Seattle & Puget Sound.
Every card is the camera's real live feed: snapshot cards refresh about every 15 seconds, stream cards play live in the grid (a few at a time, the same budget the map tiles use) and in full when you open a camera. Feeds are provided by their operators and public sources; a camera whose stream has gone off air shows as unavailable rather than playing a recording.
Portland & the Columbia
626 cameras within 30 km of downtown Portland — the Willamette and Columbia river bridges, the gorge approaches and the valley freeways that flood first when the rivers rise.
Loading live cameras…Fetching the live index for Portland & the Columbia.
Every card is the camera's real live feed: snapshot cards refresh about every 15 seconds, stream cards play live in the grid (a few at a time, the same budget the map tiles use) and in full when you open a camera. Feeds are provided by their operators and public sources; a camera whose stream has gone off air shows as unavailable rather than playing a recording.
Eureka & the North Coast
50 cameras within 40 km of Eureka — the thinnest wall on this page, because California's North Coast is rural camera country. What is here watches Humboldt Bay, Highway 101 and the Eel River corridor, where atmospheric rivers arrive earliest and hardest.
Loading live cameras…Fetching the live index for Eureka & the North Coast.
Every card is the camera's real live feed: snapshot cards refresh about every 15 seconds, stream cards play live in the grid (a few at a time, the same budget the map tiles use) and in full when you open a camera. Feeds are provided by their operators and public sources; a camera whose stream has gone off air shows as unavailable rather than playing a recording.
San Francisco Bay Area
342 cameras within 30 km of downtown San Francisco — the bayshore, the Embarcadero, the Marin shore and the bay bridges. The same wall that watched October's record king tides, now on storm watch for the winter.
Loading live cameras…Fetching the live index for San Francisco Bay Area.
Every card is the camera's real live feed: snapshot cards refresh about every 15 seconds, stream cards play live in the grid (a few at a time, the same budget the map tiles use) and in full when you open a camera. Feeds are provided by their operators and public sources; a camera whose stream has gone off air shows as unavailable rather than playing a recording.
Sacramento & the Central Valley
143 cameras within 30 km of Sacramento — the Sacramento and American River corridors and the valley freeways. This is where coastal rain becomes river water: the valley floor is the flood story of every big atmospheric river.
Loading live cameras…Fetching the live index for Sacramento & the Central Valley.
Every card is the camera's real live feed: snapshot cards refresh about every 15 seconds, stream cards play live in the grid (a few at a time, the same budget the map tiles use) and in full when you open a camera. Feeds are provided by their operators and public sources; a camera whose stream has gone off air shows as unavailable rather than playing a recording.
The Sierra Nevada passes
114 cameras within 40 km of Truckee — Donner Pass, the I-80 and US-50 corridors and the high-country towns. The same storm that floods the coast buries these passes: watch the rain-snow line climb and fall as each system arrives.
Loading live cameras…Fetching the live index for the Sierra Nevada passes.
Every card is the camera's real live feed: snapshot cards refresh about every 15 seconds, stream cards play live in the grid (a few at a time, the same budget the map tiles use) and in full when you open a camera. Feeds are provided by their operators and public sources; a camera whose stream has gone off air shows as unavailable rather than playing a recording.
Los Angeles coast
207 cameras within 30 km of Santa Monica — Malibu, the beach cities and the canyon roads below the burn scars, where forecasters watch debris-flow risk most closely in the first storms after fire.
Loading live cameras…Fetching the live index for the Los Angeles coast.
Every card is the camera's real live feed: snapshot cards refresh about every 15 seconds, stream cards play live in the grid (a few at a time, the same budget the map tiles use) and in full when you open a camera. Feeds are provided by their operators and public sources; a camera whose stream has gone off air shows as unavailable rather than playing a recording.
San Diego
198 cameras within 30 km of downtown San Diego — Mission Bay, the harbor and the river valley crossings at the southern end of the storm track.
Loading live cameras…Fetching the live index for San Diego.
Every card is the camera's real live feed: snapshot cards refresh about every 15 seconds, stream cards play live in the grid (a few at a time, the same budget the map tiles use) and in full when you open a camera. Feeds are provided by their operators and public sources; a camera whose stream has gone off air shows as unavailable rather than playing a recording.
Reading a storm on cameras
The coast answers first
Surf, harbor chop and driving rain show up on the coastal walls hours before the rivers respond. Watch Seattle, Portland and the North Coast first for a northern-track storm; the California walls lead a southern one.
Then the valleys
Sacramento and the Central Valley walls are the flood story: bridge and corridor cameras show how the rivers and the freeways are carrying the runoff a day after the rain peaks.
The rain-snow line
At Truckee and the Sierra passes, the same storm is either flood or snowpack depending on where the freezing level sits. The pass cameras show which one it is, chain controls and all.
Burn scars are the risk map
The season's first big storm, on October 21–22, put flood watches over the Malibu and Santa Monica Mountains burn scars. After fire, moderate rain on bare slopes is a debris-flow threat — the Los Angeles wall watches those canyon mouths.
How to follow a landfalling storm
- 1Start at the top of the page and work south — the walls are ordered the way the weather travels, northern landfall first.
- 2Check the coastal wall nearest the forecast landfall point for the arrival itself: surf, harbor water and the first hard rain.
- 3Move inland a few hours later: the Sacramento and valley walls show the runoff, and the Sierra walls show whether the high country is taking snow or rain.
- 4Before driving anywhere, confirm the National Weather Service warnings for your exact area — the cameras inform, they never clear a route.
- 5Come back between storms: this page stays up all season, and back-to-back atmospheric rivers are when the flooding compounds.
Atmospheric river watch — FAQ
What is an atmospheric river?+
When is atmospheric river season?+
What can these cameras actually show during a storm?+
Where do official flood warnings come from?+
Are these cameras free to watch?+
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