When can you get out — and when can you get back in?
Free crossing-condition windows for North Carolina inlets, scored for your boat size.
Free while in beta. A weekly forecaster note is in the works; join the beta list to hear first.
Inlet conditions, next 72 hours
Seven Southeast NC inlets, scored every hour from wave, wind, and tide-phase guidance.
Offshore trip planner, next 7 days
Day scores for the run out, hours on the grounds, and the run home. Pick your departure inlet and destination.
Model agreement
GFS-Wave against ECMWF-WAM at each inlet's sea buoy point. When the two diverge, trust every forecast less, including this one.
Verification
Yesterday's wave forecast against what the NDBC buoys off this coast actually measured. The inlet score is built on these models, so their error is its error.
How InletCast works
InletCast scores crossing-condition windows for seven North Carolina inlets (Masonboro, Carolina Beach, the Cape Fear River entrance, New Topsail, New River, Bogue, and Beaufort) and pairs them with a Gulf Stream trip planner and live satellite sea-surface temperature for Onslow Bay.
Terms of Use & Privacy
InletCast is condition guidance. It is not a go/no-go authority. By using this site you agree to the terms below.
As-is, no warranty
InletCast is provided “AS IS” and “as available,” without warranty of any kind, express or implied — including any warranty of accuracy, reliability, availability, merchantability, or fitness for a particular purpose. Forecasts are model output; they can be wrong, stale, or missing at exactly the moment you check them.
Assumption of risk
Crossing an ocean inlet is inherently dangerous. Bars shoal, channels move, and conditions change faster than any model updates. By using InletCast you expressly assume all risk of injury, death, or loss arising from inlet crossings and offshore passages, and you accept that the decision to cross — and its consequences — are yours alone.
No reliance
Do not rely on InletCast as your source of marine weather information. Verify everything against official NWS marine forecasts and your own observation of the water before you commit to a crossing.
Limitation of liability
To the maximum extent permitted by law, Ghosttree Technical Solutions, LLC and its members, officers, and contributors are not liable for any damages of any kind — direct, indirect, incidental, consequential, special, or otherwise, including personal injury, death, or property loss — arising from your use of, or inability to use, InletCast. Total aggregate liability is zero dollars ($0).
Governing law
These terms are governed by the laws of the State of North Carolina, without regard to conflict-of-law rules.
Privacy
No cookies, no analytics, no tracking. InletCast stores a few things in your browser’s local storage so the site works well: your theme choice, a flag that you dismissed the notice banner, and a cached copy of recent forecast responses (so repeat visits load faster and a dead connection can show the last real forecast instead of nothing). A service worker also caches the app’s own files for offline use. All of it stays on your device, none of it identifies you, and clearing this site’s data in your browser removes it. Forecast data is fetched by your browser from Open-Meteo and NOAA, either directly or through InletCast’s own caching relay; whichever endpoint answers sees your IP address like any web request, and the relay keeps no logs and no per-visitor state. Beta-list emails are used only for product updates and are never shared.
Not affiliated
InletCast is not affiliated with, operated by, or endorsed by NOAA or the National Weather Service. Operated by Ghosttree Technical Solutions, LLC, Hampstead, NC.