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From Town Tools. For the current version, visit https://www.towntools.org/astoria-oregon-us/bar-swell
The Columbia River entrance · 5 ft · 1.6 m · wind SE 9 mph
This is the half of the bar the current-and-wind page cannot measure: “Crossing the Columbia Bar” reads the NOAA gauges for the tidal current and the wind on the waterfront, and the swell arriving off the open Pacific is here. Read both before you go out, and neither of them instead of the Coast Guard.
The bar forecast is the authority, and it reads higher
This page gives you the sea arriving off the open Pacific. The National Weather Service's Columbia River Bar forecast gives the sea on the bar itself, names the ebb and says what the seas do during it — and that is routinely the larger number. On 29 October 2026, the day this page was built, the model read about 5 to 7 ft at the entrance while the bar forecast carried general seas of 6 ft rising to 8 ft on the evening ebb, with a small-craft advisory in force. The published advisory threshold for this bar is seas of 7 to 9 ft with strong tidal currents; the plain words on this page are a general small-boat read of the open sea, not that threshold. Read the bar forecast and listen for the Coast Guard bar report before you cross: they are the only ones who can restrict or close the bar, and they do.
The period matters as much as the height
Two seas of the same height behave nothing alike here, and the National Weather Service says so in the way it sets its own thresholds for this bar: its local wave criteria are a grid of significant wave height against dominant wave period, so nine feet at a short seven-second period and nine feet at thirteen seconds are not the same hazard. The long-period swell carries far more energy into shallow water, so it stands up and breaks over the bar where a short wind sea does not. Read the period next to the height. The National Weather Service in Portland publishes that grid in its marine hazard criteria, which Crossing the Columbia Bar links.
The Columbia River entrance
Open-Meteo's nearest open-water cell sits about two and a half miles southwest of the south jetty, off Clatsop Spit — the sea on its way in rather than the bar itself. NOAA's buoy 46029, twenty miles further out, is the real measurement: it agreed with the model to within a tenth of a metre when this page was built, and Crossing the Columbia Bar links it.
Rough — dangerous at the bar, many crews stay in
Waves
5 ft · 1.6 m
Swell
7s from the WNW
Wind
9 mph from the SE — offshore
Sea temperature
54°F
Next few days
Day
Waves
Wind
Looks like
Fri, Oct 30
4 ft · 1.3 m
14 mph SSE (cross-shore)
Building — the bar will be breaking; cross with care
Sat, Oct 31
4 ft · 1.1 m
11 mph S (cross-shore)
A forecast is not the bar
These are open-water model forecasts, not what the river-mouth bar is doing — the bar can be far more dangerous than the open sea, and it shifts. Wear a life jacket, tell someone your plan, and if the bar is breaking hard, wait. In an emergency call 911, or make a distress call on marine VHF channel 16 — Coast Guard Station Cape Disappointment covers the bar.
Forecast updated October 29 at 8:43 PM. Weather and marine data by Open-Meteo (CC BY 4.0).
Building — the bar will be breaking; cross with care