Salish Sea and Columbia River OFS

Last cycle 15 Oct 21:00 UTC

sscofs

FVCOM nowcast/forecast for Puget Sound, the Salish Sea and the Columbia River: water levels, currents, temperature and salinity out to 72 hours.

Model FVCOMGrid UGRID (unstructured)Region US West CoastExtent −129.5065, 44.3926 → −121.959, 52.1123

Produced by NOAA NOS CO-OPS

Coverage

Jul 28 – Oct 18

Cadence

Forecast

72h

Variables

Grid

UGRID

Vertical

10σ-layers

Coveragetime

span 2.7 months2.8 days ahead

now

Jul 28, 2026 09:00ZOct 18, 2026 21:00Z

Access

ZarrAvailable

Zarr store on S3 — open directly for best performance.

s3://noaa-nodd-kerchunk-pds/zarr3/sscofs.zarr

WMSAvailable

Rendered map tiles for Leaflet, OpenLayers, QGIS.

https://cloud.data.ioos.us/xreds/datasets/sscofs_zarr3/wms/?service=WMS&request=GetCapabilities

Open in code

python

import xarray as xr

ds = xr.open_zarr(
    "s3://noaa-nodd-kerchunk-pds/zarr3/sscofs.zarr",
    zarr_format=3,
    consolidated=False,
    storage_options={"anon": True},
)

Salish Sea and Columbia River OFS · Zarr v3, anonymous S3

import intake

cat = intake.open_catalog(
    "https://noaa-nodd-kerchunk-pds.s3.amazonaws.com/zarr3/intake.yml",
)
ds = cat["sscofs"].to_dask()

Salish Sea and Columbia River OFS · resolved through the shared catalog

Dimensions9

time1,835four4nele433,410three3node239,734maxnode11maxelem9siglev-1 → 0siglay-1 → 0

Variables44

name	standard name	units	dimensions
temp	sea_water_temperature	degrees_C	timesiglaynode
salinity	sea_water_salinity	1e-3	timesiglaynode
u	eastward_sea_water_velocity	meters s-1	timesiglaynele
v	Northward_sea_water_velocity	meters s-1	timesiglaynele
ww	not declared	meters s-1	timesiglaynele
zeta	sea_surface_height_above_geoid	meters	timenode
uwind_speed	eastward wind	meters s-1	timenele
vwind_speed	northward wind	meters s-1	timenele
atmos_press	not declared	pascals	timenode
Times	not declared	—	time
a1u	not declared	—	fournele
awy	not declared	—	threenele
a2u	not declared	—	fournele
awx	not declared	—	threenele
art1	not declared	—	node
aw0	not declared	—	threenele
iint	not declared	—	time
inundation_cells	not declared	—	timenele
art2	not declared	—	node
h	sea_floor_depth_below_geoid	m	node
latent_heat_flux	not declared	W m-2	timenode
long_wave	not declared	W m-2	timenode
nbsn	not declared	—	maxnodenode
nbe	not declared	—	threenele
nbve	not declared	—	maxelemnode
nprocs	not declared	—
ntsn	not declared	—	node
net_heat_flux	not declared	W m-2	timenode
nv	not declared	—	threenele
omega	not declared	s-1	timesiglevnode
ntve	not declared	—	node
sensible_heat_flux	not declared	W m-2	timenode
short_wave	not declared	W m-2	timenode
partition	not declared	—	nele
tauc	not declared	m^2 s^-2	timenele
wet_cells	not declared	—	timenele
wet_cells_prev_int	not declared	—	timenele
wet_cells_prev_ext	not declared	—	timenele
wet_nodes	not declared	—	timenode
x	not declared	meters	node
wet_nodes_prev_int	not declared	—	timenode
y	not declared	meters	node
xc	not declared	meters	nele
yc	not declared	meters	nele

Attributes15

title

SSCOFS

institution

School for Marine Science and Technology

source

FVCOM_4.4.7

history

model started at: 15/10/2026 22:08

references

http://fvcom.smast.umassd.edu, https://github.com/FVCOM-GitHub/FVCOM

Conventions

CF-1.0

CoordinateSystem

GeoReferenced

CoordinateProjection

proj=utm +ellps=WGS84 +zone=10

Tidal_Forcing

Tidal Forcing Time Series Title: sscofs lateral open boundary netCDF file

River_Forcing

THERE ARE 38 RIVERS IN THIS MODEL. RIVER INFLOW IS ON THE nodes WHERE TEMPERATURE AND SALINITY ARE specified IN THE MODEL. THE FOLLOWING RIVER NAMES ARE USED: 14144700 14144700 08MF005 08MF005 12200500 12200500 12167000 12167000 12150800 12150800 14211720 14211720 12213100 12213100 12201500 12201500 12113000 12113000 12089500 12089500 12101500 12101500 12061500 12061500 12080010 12080010 12031000 12031000 12045500 12045500 12048000 12048000 12054000 12054000 14220500 14220500 14243000 14243000

GroundWater_Forcing

GROUND WATER FORCING IS OFF!

Surface_Heat_Forcing

FVCOM variable surface heat forcing file: FILE NAME:sscofs.t21z.20261015.hflux.forecast.nc SOURCE:FVCOM grid (unstructured) surface forcing Unknown start date meta data format

Surface_Wind_Forcing

FVCOM variable surface Wind forcing: FILE NAME:sscofs.t21z.20261015.met.forecast.nc SOURCE:FVCOM grid (unstructured) surface forcing Unknown start date meta data format

Surface_PrecipEvap_Forcing

SURFACE PRECIPITATION FORCING IS OFF

_xpublish_id

sscofs_zarr3

Source & extent

Model core

FVCOM

Grid type

UGRID (unstructured)

Region

US West Coast

Spatial extent

−129.5065, 44.3926 → −121.959, 52.1123

Store format

Zarr v3

Source store

s3://noaa-nodd-kerchunk-pds/zarr3/sscofs.zarr