SAN DIEGO, RIGHT NOW
Gloom, surf and tide.
Gray at the coast right now, but that has no bearing on the water — 4.6 ft at 20 sec is a separate read entirely.
Marine layer
87%cloud
ForecastTomorrow morning at the coast: socked in, staying gray.
Full report, by band and by daySurf
4.6 ft
20 sec period from the S. Open-water height, measured at Mission Bay West.
Which breaks this swell reachesTide today
2:43am6.3 ft
8:55am0.3 ft
3:14pm5.5 ft
9:14pm12a4a8a12p4p8p0.0 ft MLLW
Predicted at San Diego Bay (NOAA station 9410170). Several San Diego reefs are unsurfable at the extremes — too shallow at low, too deep at high.
How the tide reads at each breakTidepools today
3:14pm
low tide, 0.3 ft · Marginal
Cabrillo is open at that hour.
Half a foot is roughly where San Diego reef starts to come out of the water. Lower is better, and negative is the good stuff.
In season right now
Nothing with a defined season window is running today.
A season window is not a guarantee. “Reliable” means it runs to a schedule; “likely” means most years; “unpredictable” means exactly that, whatever else you have read.
WHY THESE THREE, TOGETHER
Same coastline. Three unrelated numbers.
The marine layer is cloud cover. It is driven by ocean-cooled air sitting over the coast overnight, and it has no relationship to wave energy — a gray morning can have excellent surf, and a clear one can be flat. People plan around them together anyway, because both decide whether a morning at the beach is worth it.
Tide adds the third axis, and it is the one that changes the other two: a low tide can expose a reef that only works at that stage, and the same swell reads completely differently over a sandbar at high tide versus low. None of these three numbers predicts the others. That is exactly why they are worth reading side by side rather than assuming one tells you about the rest.