WindCurrents shows you the two things that decide a day on the water — what the water is doing and what the wind is doing — on one screen, on one time axis. Pick a launch site or any NOAA station and you get the tide or current curve with wind stacked directly beneath it, sharing a single cursor. Drag across the chart and both readings move together, so a max ebb sits right above the breeze that will be blowing against it.
WHAT YOU GET
- Tide and current charts from NOAA CO-OPS, the same predictions the agency publishes. Night is shaded, flood fills above the zero line, ebb below, and arrows show which way the water actually sets.
- Wind on the same axis, colored by strength, plus a forecast grid showing wind and gusts through the day.
- High and low water, max flood, max ebb and slack, with the phase you are currently looking at marked.
- Day, week and multi-day views — jump to today, the coming weekend, or any date.
- The National Weather Service Coastal Waters Forecast for the marine zone nearest you, with any small craft advisory brought to the top.
- Sunrise and sunset, so you can see whether a good window lands in daylight.
CONDITIONS ALERTS
For wind sports, WindCurrents scores every half hour of the forecast and tells you when it is worth going out — and, just as usefully, when it is not. Windows are graded by the gear they suit, because 13 knots is a good day on a foil and a wasted trip on a small sail. Set the lightest wind you will bother with and nothing below it gets flagged. Optional notifications give you up to three days' warning.
Crissy Field in San Francisco is scored against published local guidance — slack going into the ebb, the wind sector that works, and the flood-plus-southwest combination that makes it hard to get back to the beach. Everywhere else uses general wind-sport criteria, and the app tells you which it used.
COVERAGE
Anywhere NOAA publishes predictions: roughly 3,500 tide stations and 4,400 current stations across the United States. Ninety-three launch sites ship with the app across nineteen regions, and you can plan from any station whether or not a launch site is listed.
NO ACCOUNT, NO TRACKING
There is no sign-up, no analytics and no advertising. Nothing you do in the app is sent anywhere. Your location, if you allow it, is used only to draw your position on the map and is never transmitted. Free, with no subscription and nothing to unlock.
IMPORTANT
Tide and current predictions are astronomical only. They take no account of wind, river runoff or barometric pressure, all of which move real water. Conditions scoring is a planning aid, not a forecast and not a safety verdict. Check conditions yourself before you launch.
Data from NOAA CO-OPS, the National Weather Service and Open-Meteo. Not affiliated with, or endorsed by, any of them.
