Real-Time Water Level and Wave Gauges in Sebastian, Florida

Sebastian residents can check real-time water levels on the NOAA hydrograph for the Indian River Lagoon at Wabasso, which the City of Sebastian links as NOAA's only real-time water level gage in the area.

The link lives on the city's Real-Time Water Level Gage page, part of its Flooding and Hurricane Preparedness section, under the quick link titled Hydrograph from IRL at Wabasso. The gauge it opens is listed by NOAA's National Water Prediction Service as Indian River at Wabasso (in MHHW), station IRWF1.

Two agencies stand behind the number. The NWPS gauge record gives the USGS identifier 02251800, assigns the gauge to the National Weather Service office in Melbourne and the Southeast River Forecast Center, and places it in Indian River County at about 27.754 north, 80.428 west, on the lagoon south of Sebastian. The USGS station page shows daily data from October 1, 1969 and continuous data from October 1, 2007, operated in cooperation with the St. Johns River Water Management District.

The Wabasso gauge measures the Indian River Lagoon in feet above Mean Higher High Water, and NOAA flags action at 1.5 feet, minor flooding at 2 feet, moderate at 3.5 feet and major at 4.5 feet.

The datum is the key to reading it. A hydronote on the NWPS record for IRWF1 says water levels are referenced to the Mean Higher High Water datum, which can be used to approximate sea water inundation of normally dry ground near the coast. NOAA's Coastal Inundation Dashboard defines MHHW as the average of the higher of the two high tides in a day and says positive water levels indicate water higher than the typical high tide.

Read that way, a reading of zero on the Wabasso hydrograph means the lagoon is at an ordinary high tide, and a reading above zero means water is standing higher than a normal high tide along the Indian River Lagoon shore at Sebastian, Roseland and Wabasso. The NWPS record carries no current forecast for this gauge, so the hydrograph is a record of observed water rather than a predicted crest.

Wabasso is the only real-time water level gauge near Sebastian because NOAA's own tide stations at Sebastian Inlet and in the Indian River at Sebastian provide tide predictions and are not part of NOAA's real-time Coastal Inundation Dashboard.

NOAA's tide program, CO-OPS, keeps two Sebastian stations. Its metadata lists station 8722004, Sebastian Inlet, and station 8722029, Sebastian, Indian River, and marks both as not included in the inundation dashboard. Predictions for the inlet station are published on the NOAA tide predictions page, which gives predicted high and low tides rather than observed water.

Predictions and gauges answer different questions. The prediction page for 8722004 lists predicted heights in feet above Mean Lower Low Water for up to 31 days at a time, which suits planning a launch at the Sebastian Inlet ramps. It cannot show a storm surge or a wind setup in the lagoon; only the Wabasso gauge reports what the Indian River Lagoon is actually doing near Sebastian.

The nearest NOAA long-term station is far to the north. CO-OPS lists 8721604, Trident Pier, Port Canaveral, as part of the National Water Level Observation Network and included in the inundation dashboard, at about 28.42 degrees north, well up the coast from the Sebastian Inlet station at 27.86 degrees.

The dashboard itself can show other agencies' gauges. NOAA's dashboard description says its map view can toggle on other coastal stations operated by federal or state agencies such as the U.S. Geological Survey, which is how a USGS lagoon gauge like Wabasso fills the gap for Sebastian.

Live waves and wind at Sebastian Inlet come from Florida Tech's instruments on and off the north jetty, listed federally as NDBC station SIPF1, with the Scripps buoy 41114 off Fort Pierce reporting swell to the south.

Florida Tech's Coastal Processes Research Group runs a north jetty weather station recording wind, air temperature and barometric pressure, and an acoustic Doppler current profiler about 1,000 feet offshore measuring waves, currents and water level. It publishes current conditions for Sebastian Inlet from data collected with the Sebastian Inlet District, so the profiler is the one real-time water level reading at the inlet mouth itself.

The NDBC page for SIPF1 names the station Sebastian Inlet State Park North Jetty, owned and maintained by the Florida Institute of Technology, at a site elevation of 10.06 meters, and places an associated ADCP and wave site about 0.3 nautical miles, or 600 yards, north northwest of the weather station.

Swell arrives from offshore first. The NDBC page for station 41114 lists a Scripps Institution of Oceanography waverider buoy off Fort Pierce at 27.564 north, 80.215 west, southeast of Sebastian Inlet.

Beside the Wabasso hydrograph, the City of Sebastian's gauge page links a NOAA coastal inundation map, a NOAA sea level rise viewer, an Indian River County storm surge map and a survey benchmark map.

The city page lists five quick links in this order: Coastal Inundation / High Tide, the Wabasso hydrograph, Sea Level Rise, Storm Surge and Survey Benchmarks. The page sits within the city's Flooding and Hurricane Preparedness pages, alongside flood maps, the floodplain management report and hurricane preparedness guides, and lists Sebastian City Hall at 1225 Main Street.

The inundation link opens NOAA's Coastal Inundation Dashboard, which the agency describes as real-time and historic coastal flooding information at most of its coastal water level stations, with blinking pins for stations that may be flooding. Last verified: October 10, 2026, on the City of Sebastian website.