As things begin to get back in gear, many people want to know how to tell which Florida beaches are open. To that end, we have found there are several ways to check – especially if you know where you are headed.
Over the course of time, we have witnessed several communities that had opened, then closed their beaches. For us, one way to check the status was to look at beach cams. We found several places you can go and see the beaches of Florida in real time.
Beach Cams
Our first discovery was Live Beaches. This is a compendium of web cam sites from all over the United States. The Florida locations range from Panama City to Miami. We found ten Florida cities listed in their queue – each with multiple beach cams.
Additionally, we located Florida Beach Cams. They have their lists parceled out into different geographic areas of the state.
Other Means
The Pinellas County Sheriff’s Office recently began a “Beach Capacity Dashboard” for the different beaches in their jurisdiction. However, our testing of it found it to be “inactive” at that time.
And on May 10, FLAPOL published this article on which beaches were open at that time. Of course – all that is subject to change.
Finally, we have turned to social media to get real time reports from residents in a given area. Facebook is dotted with groups of locals from St. Augustine and the First Coast all the way around to Pensacola on the Emerald Coast (not to mention the interior portions of the Sunshine State.) A simple search will turn up several from any given area.
At first we just watched, then we joined. Currently, we are members of better than 150 local Facebook groups where we can keep up on local happenings. And of course right now, a hot topic of discussion is are your beaches open, are vacation rentals available, what about parking and the like.
We can report that how to tell which Florida beaches are open is something that can be done. It just takes a bit of work and knowing how to navigate the internet.
