Santa Monica Beach Webcam – Looking Down on the Pier

The Santa Monica Beach Webcam looks down on the sand from the north side of the Santa Monica Pier, high enough to hold the whole pier in a single frame. Pacific Park’s Ferris wheel and roller coaster stand at the shore end on the left, the pier deck and its lamp posts run out over the water to a two-story building with a mast at the far tip, and waves break white along the pilings below. Above all of it, Santa Monica Bay stretches away to a hazy line of hills on the far shore. Explore.org streams the view from its own headquarters, and through the day the beach fills and empties below it.

About Santa Monica Beach

Santa Monica State Beach runs for 5.6 kilometers (3.5 miles) along the city’s shoreline. It is a California state beach operated by the City of Santa Monica, with staffed lifeguard stations, a bike path and wooden walkways across the sand for beachgoers with disabilities. The stretch in this camera’s foreground lies just north of the pier, where a beach parking lot and its curving access road fill the bottom-left corner and the crown of a palm pokes up from below. Snowy plovers nest on the beach, and Palisades Park, dating to 1892, runs along the cliffs above it. The city itself had 93,076 residents at the 2020 census.

The pier is the landmark everyone comes for. The Municipal Pier opened on September 9, 1909, and in 1916 Charles Looff and his son Arthur built a second pleasure pier beside it. Together they reach about 500 meters (1,650 feet) into the bay. The Looff Hippodrome houses a 1922 carousel with 44 hand-carved horses, built by the Philadelphia Toboggan Company, and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Pacific Park opened on May 25, 1996, the first new attraction on the pier since the 1930s, and its solar-paneled Ferris wheel is the shape you pick out first on the left of the frame.

Winter storms in 1983 brought swells of 3 meters (10 feet), and a second storm struck while repairs were under way, destroying more than a third of the pier. On November 10, 2009, the city unveiled an “End of the Trail” sign on the deck, marking the pier as the symbolic western end of Route 66.

Weather and Climate in Santa Monica

The ocean keeps Santa Monica mild all year. At the Santa Monica Pier weather station, average highs move only from about 17 C (62 F) in January to 21 C (70 F) in August and September. Winter nights drop to around 10 C (49 F), while summer nights stay near 16 C (61 F). Most of the year’s 309 mm (12.2 inches) of rain falls between December and March, with January and February averaging about 78 mm (3.1 inches) each. June to September together bring barely 3 mm (0.1 inches).

Late spring and early summer belong to the marine layer locals call May Gray and June Gloom, low cloud that can turn the water gray and hide the hills across the bay. Summer afternoons put the most people on the sand and in the water, while the winter storm season is when the heaviest surf reaches the pilings. Explore.org pitches this camera for its Pacific sunsets, and in the last hour of daylight the wet sand and the bay can turn gold.

Things to Do Near Santa Monica Beach

Everything on the pier is a short walk from the sand in the frame. Pacific Park runs the Ferris wheel and the rides at the shore end, the Hippodrome carousel still turns inside its historic building, and Heal the Bay operates the Santa Monica Pier Aquarium. Just south of the pier at Arcadia Terrace, Original Muscle Beach keeps the outdoor rings and bars where bodybuilders and acrobats have trained since the 1930s.

The Marvin Braude Bike Trail, 35 kilometers (22 miles) of paved path from Pacific Palisades to Torrance, passes the pier along the sand. Head north on it to the Annenberg Community Beach House at 415 Pacific Coast Highway, built on the site of Ocean House, the 1929 estate William Randolph Hearst built for Marion Davies; its restored pool opened to the public in 2009. A few blocks inland, the Third Street Promenade pedestrian street leads to the Frank Gehry-designed Santa Monica Place.

Similar Webcams You Might Like

Three more cams around Los Angeles and its coast:

• Venice Beach Webcam
• Catalina Underwater Webcam
• LAX Airport Webcam

Frequently Asked Questions

Where is Santa Monica Beach located?

Santa Monica Beach lines Santa Monica Bay in Los Angeles County, California, along the shore of the city of Santa Monica, which the City of Los Angeles surrounds on its landward sides. The pier stands off downtown Santa Monica.

What can you see on the Santa Monica Beach Webcam?

The camera looks south along the sand toward the Santa Monica Pier. Pacific Park’s Ferris wheel and roller coaster are on the left, the full length of the pier deck runs to the right with a building and mast at its seaward end, and the surf breaks along the pilings. Lifeguard towers dot the beach, a parking lot and a palm sit in the foreground, and Santa Monica Bay fills the upper half of the picture.

Is there a live webcam of the Santa Monica Pier?

Yes. This camera keeps the whole pier in view, from Pacific Park at the shore end to the far tip, seen from above the beach on the north side. It shows the pier from a distance rather than close up, so the carousel, individual rides and the Route 66 sign are too small to make out.

Does this webcam show downtown Santa Monica or the airport?

No. The camera points out over the beach and the bay, away from town, so downtown, the Third Street Promenade and Santa Monica Airport are all out of view. The only buildings in frame are the ones on the pier and at the edge of the beach parking lot.

What is the weather like in Santa Monica?

Mild all year. Average highs at the pier range from about 17 C (62 F) in winter to 21 C (70 F) in late summer, and average lows bottom out near 10 C (49 F) in December and January. Rain falls mostly from December to March, and May Gray and June Gloom can keep the coast under low cloud in late spring and early summer.

Can you check the surf at Santa Monica on this camera?

Partly. The waves breaking beside the pier are in frame, so you can tell whether the water is flat or lined with whitewater. The camera sits too far back to judge wave height closely, though, and it comes without a surf report.

Is the Santa Monica Beach Webcam live at night?

Explore.org describes the stream as running 24 hours a day. After dark the picture depends on the lights along the pier, so daytime and the late afternoon, when the sun sinks toward the Pacific, are the best times to watch the beach itself.

Source: Explore.org