South coast

Guides

Short explainers for the parts of the board that decide whether you go. Each one links to the agency that owns the facts, and none of them go out of date on a schedule.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 Umpqua, Coos Bay, Coquille, Rogue and Chetco bars, 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 the coastline, and what to do before you dig.
• Small craft advisories and the two marine zones
  Which water PZZ350 and PZZ356 cover, what an advisory, gale or hazardous seas warning means, and why the bar and the forecast can disagree.
• Reading a south coast tide table
  What the heights are measured from, why times differ up the bay, minus tides for clamming, and when the table will be wrong.
• Road closures on 101, 42, 42S, 38 and 199
  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, 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 south coast beaches OHA samples.