Live cameras in Los Angeles, United States

Los Angeles is the largest city in California and the second largest in the United States, home to about 3.9 million people at the 2020 census. The city alone covers roughly 469 square miles of land, stretching from the San Fernando Valley in the north, across Hollywood and downtown, to the harbor at San Pedro in the south. It is less a single place than a long chain of neighborhoods stitched together by freeways, hills and a lot of sunshine.

Almost every camera on this page belongs to Caltrans, the California Department of Transportation. These are official highway cameras, public domain, and what you see are still snapshots that refresh every few minutes, with video on some. Because the city is so big, the views here cover a large part of the freeway network: the Santa Monica and San Bernardino freeways (I-10), the Golden State and Santa Ana freeways (I-5), the Harbor Freeway (I-110), the San Diego Freeway (I-405), the Hollywood and Ventura freeways (US 101), and the Century Freeway (I-105). They are practical cameras, meant for checking traffic, but on a clear day they also show the city's light, haze and mountains in the background.

When to look

Los Angeles runs on Pacific Time, UTC minus 8 hours in winter and UTC minus 7 during daylight saving time, from March to early November. Weekday rush hours are long here, roughly from 5 to 10 in the morning and from 3 to 7 in the afternoon, so those are the hours when the cameras show the famous slow red lines in real life. Late spring and early summer bring May Gray and June Gloom, when a low marine cloud layer covers the basin in the morning and usually burns off by late morning. Fall and winter offer the clearest air and the sharpest views of the San Gabriel Mountains, sometimes with snow on the peaks after a winter storm.

Nearby on our map, Long Beach has its own freeway cameras plus a live view of a tropical reef at the Aquarium of the Pacific. To the south, the cities of Carson and Lakewood show the freeways that link Los Angeles to the harbor and to Orange County.

Sources: Los Angeles - Wikipedia · Transportation in Los Angeles - Wikipedia · June Gloom - Wikipedia · Caltrans CCTV documentation.