Method
Every number on this site is measured or scored once, upstream, by the same pipeline that writes the morning email. The site renders it. It never re-grades a day, and it never guesses at a value it did not receive.
Each day gets four subscores out of 100. They are weighted into one score, and that score lands in a rating band.
How much water actually moves, and when. Range in feet, peak rate in feet per hour, and where the highs and lows fall relative to daylight. A big range at 3 AM is worth less than a modest one at sunrise. Heights come from the NOAA CO-OPS station nearest each spot.
Range matters more at a pass than in a back bay. East Matagorda swings half a foot on a good day; Freeport swings over two.
Speed and direction by the hour, cross-checked between the NWS gridpoint forecast and a second model. Under about 12 knots you can work a lure; above that, bait scores better because you can no longer feel the lure. Direction is scored against each spot's ideal bearing.
Where the two models disagree, that day's wind is flagged as less certain.
Inferred, not observed. Forty-eight hours of measured buoy wind is run against the spot's geography and its Gulf influence: sustained light southerly walks clean water in, hard wind of any direction stirs a shallow bay to chocolate.
This is the weakest input on the board and the one worth checking with your own eyes. Nothing here has seen the water.
Moon overhead and underfoot give the major periods; moonrise and moonset give the minors. A period is worth far more when it lands on top of maximum tidal flow or on first light, which is why the best window is often narrower than the solunar table alone would suggest.
Positions come from the US Naval Observatory.
There are three, and only three. A day is one of them.
The score does not always decide. Above 25 knots a day is set to DON'T BOTHER whatever the four inputs added up to — at that speed you cannot work a lure and the bay will be brown by lunch. So a day can read 71 and still say don't bother. Believe the rating, not the number.
These are the same colours the email uses, from the same palette, so a day looks identical in both places. Green is prime, orange is worth a trip, red is poor — orange is not a warning colour here.
Every day carries two scores, not one. The same tide that makes a day good for a free-lined croaker can make it unfishable with a quarter-ounce jighead, and vice versa. Where the two scores are within a few points the day is marked either — bring both and let the water decide.
Well up inside Galveston Bay. Clean Gulf water rarely reaches here, so clarity is mostly about whether wind is stirring the shallow bay rather than which direction it blows from.
Safety: Heavy industrial and barge traffic, and the dike rocks are slick with steep drop-offs on the channel side. Wade the shallow side only.
Sits in the Galveston Channel just inside Bolivar Roads, so Gulf water arrives on the incoming but is already mixed with ship-channel traffic and bay outflow.
Safety: This is a working deep-draft ship channel. Commercial traffic has right of way and throws a heavy wake with no warning. Stay well clear of the channel edge and never anchor in it.
The pass drains all of West Bay through one narrow throat, so even a modest tide moves real water over the bars and drop-offs.
Safety: San Luis Pass has the strongest and most lethal current on the upper Texas coast. Wade the bars only on the last of the fall or the first of the rise - never on peak flow, never alone. The bottom drops away with no warning and the outgoing will carry you into the Gulf.
Shallow seagrass back bay behind Follets Island, reached from West Bay. Two to three feet over most of it, so wind speed muddies it far faster than wind direction cleans it.
Safety: Very shallow and remote with soft mud bottom - easy to get a boat stuck a long way from help, and a long wade back. Watch the weather window rather than the clock.
Deep jettied entrance with direct Gulf exchange - the biggest tide range of these spots, and green water shows here first when the wind turns onshore.
Safety: Granite jetty rock is slick and the gaps between boulders break ankles. The channel carries constant commercial traffic - never wade or anchor in it, and watch your wake exposure on the jetty tips.
Enclosed bay behind the peninsula with no direct Gulf pass - the smallest tide range on this list by a wide margin, so wind tide moves more water here than the astronomical tide does.
Safety: Long runs from any ramp and very little shelter if it blows up. The nearest offshore buoy is 85 nm away, so the measured wind history behind this forecast is a regional read, not a local one.
Quoted from the most recent run — these are the notes the pipeline itself attaches.