Is It Beach Day? ☀️🌊

Formerly "Boca Beach Rats" — rebranded for the move to isitbeachday.com.

Live local beach conditions for Boca Raton, FL, consolidated into one page each with a single composite Beach Day score (for beachgoers — no surfing). Built config-first so adding a new beach town is a single entry — the long-term goal is every beach town.

What it shows

• Tides — next high/low (NOAA CO-OPS)
• Water temperature & live wind — nearest NDBC buoy (LKWF1)
• Air temp, wind, sky, rain chance — NWS api.weather.gov
• Waves / swell / period / sea-surface temp / UV — Open-Meteo
• Official lifeguard report — beach warning flags, swim/snorkel ratings, marine life & hazards (scraped from the City of Boca Raton Ocean Rescue page)
• Water quality — FL Healthy Beaches enterococci sampling, mapped to good/moderate/poor
• Beach & surf cams — public cams for the area (embedded inline where the host allows framing; Surfline and frame-blocking hosts link out), each with live weather & wind pulled from Open-Meteo at the cam's own coordinates

A single composite Beach Day score (0–100), weighted for beachgoers:

Sub-score	Weight
Air temperature	18%
Sky / precipitation	18%
Wind (calmness)	14%
Water temperature	11%
Comfort (mugginess)	9%
Sea state (swim calmness)	8%
Seaweed (sargassum)	7%
Water quality	6%
Crowds	5%
UV index	4%

Seaweed and Crowds are scored from 0–100 numbers the vision model reads off the cams (seaweed = % of shore covered; crowds = how full the beach looks), interpolated through calibrated anchors; both fall back to the categorical bins when no number is available, and seaweed's moderate/high caps stay keyed to the category for a stable headline.

Comfort is driven by the dew point — the real "how heavy does the air feel" signal (sweat can't evaporate as it climbs): ≤60°F is comfortable, 65–69°F gets sticky, ≥70°F is oppressive. Relative humidity is shown alongside it (and adds a small extra penalty above 85%), but the score leans on dew point because humidity alone is ambiguous.

Official lifeguard flags and hazards act as safety overrides. We separate a true closure from a swim-only hazard: a double-red flag (water closed) drives the score to ~0, while a red flag or high rip-current risk caps it at ≤85 — these warn swimmers but you can still have a great day on the sand. A water-quality or city no-swim advisory caps it at ≤40. Seaweed is both a sub-score and a ceiling: heavy mats (high) cap the day at ≤65 and moderate bands at ≤85 — unpleasant, but not a closure. The purple (marine-pest) flag is shown in the safety banner for awareness but does not affect the score — it's near-constant in South Florida, so it carries no day-to-day signal.

Tech

Next.js (App Router) + TypeScript + Tailwind. All data is fetched server-side (avoids CORS, centralizes caching) by isolated adapters in lib/sources/*, aggregated in lib/conditions.ts, scored in lib/score.ts, and exposed at GET /api/conditions/[slug].

config/locations.ts   # add a town here — drives everything
lib/sources/*          # one adapter per data source (each degrades gracefully)
lib/conditions.ts      # parallel fetch + assemble snapshot
lib/score.ts           # Beach Day score with weighted breakdown & safety caps
app/[slug]/page.tsx    # beach dashboard (client shell: ConditionsDashboard)
app/page.tsx           # all-beaches landing
app/api/conditions/... # cached JSON API (also a public endpoint)

Develop

npm install
npm run dev      # http://localhost:3000/boca-raton
npm test         # parser + scoring unit tests (Vitest)
npm run lint
npm run build

No API keys are required — every default source is free and keyless. See .env.example for the optional Stormglass key, the FL Healthy Beaches DataPage override, and the User-Agent used for NWS.

Add a beach town

Add an entry to LOCATIONS in config/locations.ts (illustrative example — Deerfield Beach, a second Broward town):

{
  slug: "deerfield-beach",
  name: "Deerfield Beach",
  region: "Broward County, FL",
  lat: 26.317, lon: -80.0748,
  timezone: "America/New_York",
  noaaTideStationId: "8722816",       // nearest NOAA tide station
  ndbcBuoyId: "LKWF1",                 // nearest NDBC buoy
  offshoreWindFromDeg: 270,            // beach faces east -> offshore wind from the west
  healthyBeaches: {                    // FL DOH county + SPLocation site names
    county: "Broward",
    sites: ["DEERFIELD BEACH PIER", "DEERFIELD BEACH SE 10TH ST"],
  },
  cams: [ /* iframe (YouTube/embeddable) or link cams */ ],
}

That's it — the route, scoring, and UI all pick it up automatically. (Find the exact SPLocation names per county from the FL DOH feed: https://services1.arcgis.com/CY1LXxl9zlJeBuRZ/arcgis/rest/services/FloridaBeachSamplingPoints/FeatureServer/0/query?where=County='Broward'&outFields=SPLocation,Active&f=json.)

Known gaps / next steps

• Lifeguard flags for new towns: Boca Raton scrapes its Ocean Rescue page for warning flags; towns added without a cityConditionsUrl show no flags and so apply no safety caps. Add a flag source per town as one is found.
• Tide phase for surf: the surf tide sub-score is a generic mid-tide constant; add per-spot tide preferences for real accuracy.

Deploy (Netlify)

This app deploys to Netlify using the official Next.js runtime — netlify.toml and .nvmrc are committed, so it's zero-config:

1. Push to GitHub and Add a new site → Import an existing project in Netlify, picking this repo. Netlify reads netlify.toml (npm run build, Node 20, the @netlify/plugin-nextjs plugin) and auto-installs the plugin.
2. No environment variables are required. Optionally set CONDITIONS_USER_AGENT, FL_HEALTHY_BEACHES_APPKEY, or STORMGLASS_API_KEY (see .env.example) under Site settings → Environment variables.
3. SSG pages, the /api/conditions/[slug] route, and per-source next.revalidate caching all work on Netlify's Next.js runtime.

Or from the CLI: npm i -g netlify-cli && netlify deploy --build (use --prod to publish).

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Composite scores are an automated estimate for general guidance only — not a safety determination. Always follow posted flags and lifeguards.