Washington coast

Guides

Short explainers for the parts of the board that decide whether you go, for Clallam, Jefferson, Grays Harbor and Pacific counties, Neah Bay to the Columbia. Each one links to the agency that owns the facts, and none of them go out of date on a schedule.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 this coast’s entrances, why Washington has four regulated bars and only three of them reported, and the numbers to call.
• Tsunami: what to do
  The tsunami nobody will warn you about — the one that starts here, where the shaking is the warning — and what to do when the ground moves.
• Razor clam digs: how a date becomes an opening
  Why a dig is a set of approved dates on a named beach rather than a season, who tests the clams, and why the date can be withdrawn.
• Shellfish closures, explained
  What a Department of Health closure is, why cooking does not help, and why an open beach and an open season are two different permissions.
• Ocean fishing seasons, explained
  What OPEN, CLOSED and CHECK mean on the fishing tile, how to read one, which Marine Area each town fishes, and this year’s bottomfish rules.
• Small craft advisories and the marine zones
  Which water your town opens onto, what an advisory, gale or hazardous seas warning means, and why the bar and the forecast can disagree.
• Reading a tide table on this coast
  What the zero is measured from, which stations here are real instruments and which are offsets, minus tides for digging, and when the table will be wrong.
• Road closures on the coast highways
  What closed and delay mean on the board, and why a closure matters more here: on most of these roads there is no second way round.
• Fire season on the wettest coast in the country
  Fire danger, the burn ban that sits beside it, who sets each, and why burning is a separate question from either.
• Beach water: who samples, and what a posting means
  Which saltwater beaches on these boards are tested for bacteria and by whom, the number behind an advisory, and why a beach nobody samples is not a clean one.