Live cameras in Sacramento, United States

California’s capital lies at the meeting of the Sacramento and American rivers, on the flat floor of the Sacramento Valley in the northern half of the Central Valley. About 525,000 people lived in the city at the 2020 census, spread over roughly 100 square miles of tree-lined neighborhoods, levees and riverfront. A deep-water channel through the Delta links its port to San Francisco Bay.

Because so many routes converge here, Sacramento’s own camera set leans heavily on freeways. LiveLocation lists about 70 Caltrans cameras from the CWWP2 feed for District 3, covering corridors such as Interstate 5 beside the river, I-80 and Business 80 across the north and center of town, US 50 heading east toward Lake Tahoe, and State Route 99 running south down the valley. They capture still images on a cycle, which makes them handy for checking traffic, rain or fog before a drive across the valley.

Winter is when these cameras get interesting. Between November and March, and most often in December and January, dense tule fog can form on calm nights after rain, sometimes cutting visibility to under 100 feet. A morning look may show nothing but white, and the fog can lift in patches during the day before settling again after sunset. Summers swing the other way, with hot, dry afternoons that are often eased in the evening by the Delta breeze drifting in from the bay. Rain falls mostly between November and April, and the city runs on Pacific Time.

Old Sacramento and the gold Tower Bridge sit on the riverfront next to I-5, a few blocks from the State Capitol. Within the radius you may also see cameras in West Sacramento, Roseville and Elk Grove, and farther along I-80 as it climbs east toward the foothills and the high Sierra Nevada.

Sources: Sacramento, California – Wikipedia · Tule fog – Wikipedia · Caltrans CWWP2 CCTV data.