SargaVue
Where the water is taking it, and where it is forecast to land.
Two maps. The first shows the latest surface current of the Gulf and the Caribbean as moving light, over the satellite detections of floating sargassum. The second plays CONABIO's 10-day beaching forecast for the Mexican Caribbean coast, one published day at a time, every number cited to its snapshot.
Drift map
Where the water is going
The surface current, drawn as light that moves with it, over the satellite detections of floating sargassum. Pan and zoom; the field is redrawn every day from NOAA's altimetry.
- Currents
- Loading the current field…
- Detections
- Loading the detections…
- Shore risk
- Loading NOAA's shore risk…
The moving light is where the surface water is going: a geostrophic current from satellite altimetry, sampled every 0.4° and interpolated between samples, redrawn once a day. The particles are a way of seeing the field, not objects in the water. The glow is the USF floating-algae index — a reflectance signal, not a tonnage. The rings along the coast are NOAA's own coastal inundation risk for the day, in NOAA's colours: an experimental product that reads the index within 50–100 km of each stretch of coast against recent days (the drift's own landings, when it is on, are filled dots on the beaching scale). None of these predicts what lands on a given beach; the beaching forecast below is CONABIO's, and is published separately.
Beaching forecast
Day by day along the coast
Press play, or step through the days. The total counts what the forecast says has beached so far, across every published kilometre.
Satellite maps, beach watch sites and every other feed we follow are on Live conditions.