Data sources and freshness
| Feed | Source | Status | Download |
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Water forecast model
The Water forecast card and the hollow markers on the map come from LiveOcean, a daily ocean model of the Salish Sea and Washington coast run by Parker MacCready's group at the University of Washington School of Oceanography and published through NANOOS. The portal reads the model cells nearest the bay mouth and the ORCA Dabob Bay buoy.
- It is a model, not a measurement. Each run starts around 5 pm Pacific and forecasts about three days ahead.
- Surface water only. The public feed carries surface temperature and salinity. Oxygen, pH, and currents are computed by the model but not published, so the portal cannot show a dissolved-oxygen forecast yet.
- Coarse grid. Cells are about 500 m across, so Thorndyke Bay itself is barely resolved. The nearest wet cell sits at the bay mouth in 22 m of water and represents the Hood Canal channel more than the shallow beds.
- Model check: loading…
Bag temperature record
The Bag temperature record card and the farm normal on the Water card come from Onset HOBO MX2204 loggers that sat together inside a research bag on Step 4 from October 2024 to September 2026, logging every 15 minutes. The data were collected for the RobertsLab 10K seed C. gigas outplant, and the 15-minute readings are archived on this site's sensor-data branch.
- The bag is intertidal. It sits at about 2 ft MLLW, estimated from where the readings switch between water and air temperature as the predicted Lofall tide falls, which agrees with the elevation map. Below that tide the loggers read air and sun.
- Water means well covered. For the first 3 hours after the bag is covered again, it sits in water that has just crossed the flats: about 4–5°F warmer than the bay in summer and 2°F colder in winter. Water temperature and the monthly farm normal use only the readings after that, so they describe the bay water at the bed.
- Bag max and min include everything, so they show what oysters in the bag went through at low tide.
- Quality control. Readings within 90 minutes of a logger download are left out, as is August 20–21, 2025, when the loggers were out of the bag (85°F at high tide, then 46°F overnight). The other QC tests are the ones used for the farm sensors.
- Two years is not a climatology. Treat the farm normal as "what this record saw", next to LiveOcean's 2014–2024 model normal.
Satellite imagery
The Satellite view map layer and the Satellite card show true-color Copernicus Sentinel-2 images of the bay at 10 m, built twice a day from the Earth Search and Planetary Computer catalogs. Contains modified Copernicus Sentinel data.
- A pass every 2–3 days, late morning. Each scene is tagged with the predicted Lofall tide at capture, which decides whether the beds show exposed.
- Clouds. "Clear at the bay" is the cloud-free share within 1.5 km of the site. Clear passes are rare from November to March.
- True color only, for now. Turbidity and chlorophyll products are planned once they have been checked against rain events.
- Status: loading…
About this portal
This portal collects public environmental data for Thorndyke Bay (Hood Canal, Jefferson County, WA) to help oyster growers plan day-to-day work: tide windows, heat exposure at low tide, rain, wind, water conditions, and shellfish status. Data updates automatically about every 20 minutes.
Coming next: more on-site weather and water sensors at farm sites, satellite turbidity and chlorophyll products, and text/email alerts.
Advisory only. Official shellfish harvest closures come from the WA Department of Health. Tide predictions and forecasts can be wrong. Use your own judgment on the beach.