Live cameras in Encinitas, United States

Encinitas is a beach city in North County San Diego, about twenty-five miles north of downtown San Diego. Its roughly twenty square miles include five distinct communities: Old Encinitas with its downtown and the famous Swami's surf break, New Encinitas around the shopping centers, artsy Leucadia with its eucalyptus-lined Coast Highway, Cardiff-by-the-Sea to the south, and rural Olivenhain in the hills to the east. Some 62,000 people lived in Encinitas in 2020. The city sits between Batiquitos Lagoon on the north and San Elijo Lagoon on the south, with sandstone bluffs dropping to the beaches.

The golden lotus towers of the Self-Realization Fellowship, which overlook Swami's, have been a local landmark since the 1930s, and the San Diego Botanic Garden grows plants from around the world on the inland side of town.

What the cameras show

The cameras grouped here come from Caltrans, the California Department of Transportation, through its CWWP2 camera feed. The feed delivers stills that renew every few minutes. Around Encinitas they look mostly along Interstate 5, the main north-south freeway of coastal San Diego County, which runs through the city a short distance inland from Coast Highway 101. Expect lanes, ramps and the lagoon crossings rather than beach views.

Encinitas is on Pacific Time. Weekday traffic on I-5 builds southbound toward San Diego in the morning and northbound in the late afternoon, and summer weekends bring beach traffic as well. The weather is mild most of the year, with average highs in the low seventies, but late spring often brings the marine layer the locals call May Gray and June Gloom, so mornings may look gray and misty before the sun breaks through. Most of the year's modest rainfall comes in winter.

Nearby, Carlsbad's flower fields bloom on the hills to the north each spring, and the coastal town of Del Mar, with its racetrack and fairgrounds, is a few miles south.

Sources: Encinitas, California - Wikipedia · City of Encinitas · Caltrans QuickMap.