Sebastian Inlet cams and surf conditions — Sebastian, Florida

Sebastian Inlet can be watched live on the Sebastian Inlet District webcam page, which offers eight named camera views with image archives and recent video clips.

The main public camera network at Sebastian Inlet belongs to the Sebastian Inlet District. Its webcam page lists separate views named North Jetty, Surf and Jetty, North View, Looking South, South Jetty, North Zoom, North Jetty Wide View and West Shot, each with a desktop and mobile image archive, and some with short recent video clips. The page credits the webcam and website technology to Erdman Video Systems and the images and weather data to the Sebastian Inlet District.

The District attaches a caution to the cameras: viewers are asked to check the date and time of photos and videos before making boating, fishing, surfing or swimming decisions, because conditions can change quickly in the inlet and the images are provided for general reference. The image archives help with that check, because each view keeps a run of recent frames rather than a single still of the North Jetty or the South Jetty.

Florida State Parks points to the same source. Its Sebastian Inlet State Park page describes a webcam at the North Jetty that updates every 10 minutes, courtesy of the Sebastian Inlet District, and its experiences page lists two webcams under surfing at the park, the Sebastian Inlet District webcam and a Surf Guru webcam. The District also packages the cameras in a free phone app; its app page states that the app carries the inlet webcam, the weekly fishing report and instant updates on weather, District projects, navigation issues and emergency notifications.

Live wave and weather data at Sebastian Inlet come from Florida Tech's north jetty weather station and its current profiler about 1,000 feet offshore.

Below the camera views, the District webcam page carries a weather panel that it says updates every 30 seconds, with temperature, humidity, pressure and its trend, wind speed, recent high gust, wind direction and rainfall, plus a Sebastian Inlet tide chart colored green for ebb tide and blue for flood tide and a water temperature reading supplied by the Florida Institute of Technology.

The instruments behind those numbers belong to the Florida Tech Coastal Processes Research Group, which describes a long-term monitoring program at Sebastian Inlet run with the Sebastian Inlet District. Its field site has two parts: a north jetty weather station that records wind, air temperature and barometric pressure at the end of the north jetty, and an acoustic Doppler current profiler about 1,000 feet offshore that measures waves, currents and water level. On October 10, 2026, the group's current conditions panel for Sebastian Inlet showed a significant wave height of 2.6 feet, a peak period of 8.2 seconds, wind of 12 mph and water at 79 degrees.

The jetty station is also in the federal network as NDBC station SIPF1, Sebastian Inlet State Park North Jetty, owned and maintained by the Florida Institute of Technology. The buoy center lists an associated wave site about 0.3 nautical miles north northwest of the meteorological station, which corresponds to the offshore profiler Florida Tech describes. Together the two instruments record conditions at Sebastian Inlet itself, beside First Peak and the north jetty, rather than miles up or down the coast.

Swell headed for Sebastian Inlet shows first on NOAA buoys 41114 off Fort Pierce and 41113 off Cape Canaveral, which report every hour.

Two Scripps waverider buoys sit on either side of the inlet. Station 41114, Fort Pierce (CDIP 134), lies to the south, and station 41113, Cape Canaveral Nearshore (CDIP 143), lies to the north. NWS Melbourne's nearshore buoy page states that both report wave height, wave period, wave direction and sea surface temperature every hour, giving a read on the swell arriving north and south of Sebastian Inlet.

The two buoys can read quite differently on the same afternoon. At 2:56 p.m. on October 10, 2026, the Fort Pierce buoy showed 2.6 feet at a dominant period of 8 seconds from the northeast, 52 degrees true, with water at 85.8 degrees. At the same time the Cape Canaveral Nearshore buoy showed 2.3 feet at 4 seconds from the southeast, 129 degrees true, with water at 82.4 degrees. Taken at the same minute, the two readings show how much the sea state can change between the waters north and south of Sebastian Inlet.

The NWS Melbourne Surf Zone Forecast for Coastal Indian River gives daily rip current risk, surf height, water temperature and tide times for Sebastian Inlet.

NWS Melbourne publishes a Surf Zone Forecast for its beaches, and Sebastian Inlet falls in the section for Coastal Indian River, Mainland Southern Brevard and the Southern Brevard Barrier Islands, which covers the beaches of Vero Beach, Cocoa Beach, Satellite Beach and Melbourne Beach. Each day lists rip current risk, surf height, thunderstorm potential, UV index, water temperature, weather, high temperature, winds, sunrise, sunset and tide times, and the tide list for this section names Sebastian Inlet and Port Canaveral.

The issue of 11 a.m. on October 10, 2026 shows the format. For that day it rated rip current risk High, put surf at 2 to 3 feet and water in the lower 80s, and listed a Sebastian Inlet low tide of 0.5 feet at 2:24 p.m. For Sunday it dropped the risk to Moderate with surf around 2 feet and listed a Sebastian Inlet high tide of 3.0 feet at 8:57 a.m. The NWS Melbourne beach page defines a High rating to mean life-threatening rip currents are likely and that the surf zone is dangerous for all levels of swimmers, and Sebastian Inlet State Park asks beachgoers to follow the warning flags posted at its welcome stations and on the beaches.

The surf forecast's tide times come from tide predictions, not a live gauge. NOAA's tide predictions for station 8722004, Sebastian Inlet bridge, are calculated for a subordinate station referenced to Miami, and no real-time water level gauge operates near Sebastian; the closest is Trident Pier at Port Canaveral.

Sebastian Inlet State Park is open 24 hours a day for $8 per vehicle, but 2026 bridge construction limits south side beach access and parking near the inlet.

Sebastian Inlet State Park, at 9700 South Highway A1A, is open 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, and charges $8 per vehicle, according to Florida State Parks. The North Ranger Station stays open around the clock, but since November 12, 2025, the South Ranger Station has kept standard park hours of 8 a.m. to sunset. The park also warns that on weekends and during peak periods the north side may reach capacity and temporarily close to incoming visitors.

Bridge work adds another limit in 2026. The park page states that construction was scheduled to begin in May 2026 on the Sebastian Inlet bridge along Jimmy Buffett Memorial Highway, with increased traffic congestion and construction noise, and that access to the beach from the south side is unavailable during construction. The District webcam page carries a matching notice about limited parking at Sebastian Inlet because of the Florida Department of Transportation bridge project, a constraint that applies to every trip from Sebastian to the inlet while the work continues.