Live cameras in Santa Cruz, United States

Santa Cruz wraps around the northern edge of Monterey Bay, where the Santa Cruz Mountains drop down to beaches, cliffs and a long wooden wharf. It is the seat of Santa Cruz County and had about 63,000 residents in the 2020 census. The Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk, California's oldest amusement park, still runs its historic rides by the sand, and the University of California, Santa Cruz, founded in 1965, gives the town much of its relaxed college-town character. Surfing runs deep here, with well-known breaks such as Steamer Lane along West Cliff Drive.

The cameras on this page are mostly Caltrans traffic cameras. Two state highways meet in Santa Cruz: State Route 1, which follows the coast toward Watsonville and Monterey, and State Route 17, the winding mountain road over the summit to San Jose. We show the still images Caltrans publishes, which refresh every few minutes and are handy for checking traffic, rain or fog on the Highway 17 grade before a trip over the hill. There is also a NOAA National Data Buoy Center BuoyCAM on the Monterey weather buoy, moored far out in the bay about 27 nautical miles west-northwest of Monterey. Its pictures are a strip of six frames that together make a full 360-degree view of the sea around the buoy, taken about once an hour and only in daylight, so the image goes dark or stale at night.

Santa Cruz is on Pacific Time, UTC-8 in winter and UTC-7 during daylight time. Mild weather is the rule, though summer mornings often start under coastal fog that clears by midday, and early fall is usually the sunniest stretch. Winter brings the rain and the biggest swells, which is when the buoy view gets interesting. From October through early February, thousands of monarch butterflies cluster in the eucalyptus grove at Natural Bridges State Beach on the west side of town.

Across the bay, our Monterey page adds the Monterey Bay Aquarium's live streams, including its bay view and sea otter cam.

Sources: Santa Cruz, California - Wikipedia · Natural Bridges State Beach - Wikipedia · NDBC BuoyCAMs · Caltrans CCTV documentation.