Bright's Beaches
Sam Bright's Favourite Beaches
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Water conditions score for the next 7 days. Bigger and greener is better.
Find out why I built this diving forecast model and how to give feedback ↓
How is the score worked out? ↓
Single day: each day is scored on its own, ignoring the days before it. Switch it off to see the full score, which includes how recent swell and rain linger.
How the score works
Every beach gets a score from 0 to 100 for each day. It's a general indicator of water conditions and whether they're improving or getting worse, not a guarantee. Three things make up the score:
- Swell and each beach's direction profile. Every beach has a profile of how exposed it is to each direction of swell, so the same swell affects beaches facing different ways differently. A north-east swell can hit one beach hard and barely reach the next. The model checks the day's main and secondary swell, in direction and size, against that profile. Bigger swell at a more exposed beach means a lower score, and very large swell on an exposed beach caps the score low.
- Rain and each beach's rain sensitivity. Rain washes runoff, drain and river water into the sea. Each beach has its own sensitivity: higher at river mouths and near drains, lower on clean headlands. A few millimetres barely registers, around 10 mm in a day is a big hit, and 25 mm or more is the maximum.
- The days before count. Each day is affected by the scores of the 3 previous days, with less impact the further back they are (rain lingers a little longer than swell). So a calm day after a messy few is better than those days but not yet great, and after several clean days the score builds back up.
The swell and rain scores are then combined into the final score. Turn on Single day in the toggle bar to see each day on its own, without the carry-over from earlier days.
Swell is averaged from 6am to 5pm, because that's when people are actually getting in the water, and rain is the day's total, both from free Open-Meteo forecasts. The forecast grid is coarse, so neighbouring beaches can start with the same raw swell numbers, and the difference between them comes from their direction profiles and rain sensitivity.
Why I made this
I work in data analysis and tech. This was a fun (by my definition) project to fully test automation, AI and predictive models, which is what I do at work, pointed at my passion: diving.
It also makes my life easier. I've distilled how I personally read the charts (swell, rain and so on) into a score I can check in seconds.
Friends often ask me what I think the conditions will be like, so this is also a way to help them plan their dives.
It won't be perfect. It's a general indicator of conditions at a beach or dive site, and whether they're improving or deteriorating.
Feedback welcome. If a score matches what you saw, tell me. If it's way off, tell me that too, so I can tweak the model. Message me on Instagram: @sammybrightstuff