There are a wide vari­ety of pho­to­genic sites around the San Fran­cis­co bay area, each with their own micro cli­mate and access chal­lenges. The fog may be in or out, it may be cloudy in one area and sun­ny just a mile away, the surf may be up or flat, the traf­fic to that site may be insur­mount­able. Before I dri­ve or hike some­where to take pic­tures, I often check the con­di­tions via the many web cams locat­ed around the bay area. Here is a list of active web cams I find use­ful. Some cam­eras allow you to take con­trol to pan and zoom the scene.

SanFranciscoBay.com has the most com­plete col­lec­tion I have found to-date.

SFGate and CBS5.com have their own sim­i­lar col­lec­tions.

But there are more:

Con­tro­lable “Alca­traz” cam which is actu­al­ly from Sausal­i­to.

SurfLine.com links to all avail­able cam­eras point­ed at the ocean in addi­tion to list­ing surf con­di­tions. Explore this site to find reports and surf cams from around the world. this link takes you to Cen­tral Cal­i­for­nia.

Hi-Def San Fran­cis­co (pic­tured above) mon­i­tors the bay and sky­line from Sausal­i­to, track­ing ships and offer­ing time lapse movies of inter­est­ing days.

Sam­Cam at Sam’s Chow­der House in Prince­ton Har­bor will give you an idea of the weath­er con­di­tions in Half Moon Bay.

For traf­fic con­di­tions, I check SFGate’s traf­fic page and 511.org for a live map of dri­ve time and high­way speeds.

I also mon­i­tor the Bay Area Air Qual­i­ty Man­age­ment Dis­trict look­ing for clues to air clar­i­ty.

That’s a start. I’ll list more as I find them and l’ll link this post for easy access on the side of this blog.

Hap­py view­ing!