Oregon coast

Guides

Short explainers for the parts of the board that decide whether you go, for every board from Astoria to Brookings. Each one links to the agency that owns the facts, and none of them go out of date on a schedule. The live readings are on the board.

• How to read a bar report
  What restricted, closed and unknown mean on the ten Coast Guard bars from the Columbia to the Chetco, which entrances nobody reports, and the numbers to call.
• Tsunami: what to do, and where to go from each town
  Local and distant tsunamis, warning versus advisory versus watch, and the evacuation map for each town.
• Shellfish closures, explained
  Why clams, mussels and crab close, how closures follow landmarks rather than counties, and what to do before you dig.
• Ocean fishing seasons, explained
  What OPEN, CLOSED and CHECK mean on the fishing tile, how to read a salmon action notice, which area each town fishes, and this year’s bottomfish rules.
• Small craft advisories and the marine zones
  Which water PZZ251, PZZ252, PZZ253, PZZ350 and PZZ356 cover, which office writes each, what an advisory, gale or hazardous seas warning means, and why the bar and the forecast can disagree.
• Reading an Oregon coast tide table
  What the heights are measured from, why times differ up the bay, minus tides for clamming, the five live gauges, and when the table will be wrong.
• Road closures on the coast highways
  What closed, chains and delay mean on the board, slide season, ODOT’s chain signs, and the California side of 199.
• Fire season: fire danger and IFPL
  The public rules, the rules for logging and industrial work, who sets them on each stretch of coast, and why burning is a third, separate question.
• Beach bacteria advisories
  What an advisory means and does not, why “not monitored” is not clean, and which beaches OHA samples.