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From Town Tools. For the current version, visit https://www.towntools.org/narva-ida-viru-county-ee/bathing-water
Little rain lately — read the grades below as they are.
Nothing much has washed into the water recently, so the beach grades below are the real read today.
5,4 mm
Rain, last 72 hours
Weather-model estimate for the shore (72 h covered), not a rain gauge
1,2 mm
Heaviest hour
A downpour matters more than steady drizzle
What the health authority graded
The bathing-water class published for each beach, sampled 16 July 2026 — 2 months ago. Swimming is judged on the class, not on our wording; both are shown.
Beach
Published class
Plain read
Narva-Jõesuu bathing place 2Too new for a four-year class, so the Health Board publishes none. It is sampled like the others, and the sample of 15 July 2026 was rated excellent.
Ei ole võimalik hinnata — cannot be assessed
swim with care
Kadastiku järv (the quarry lake)A quarry lake north-west of the city, also too new for a four-year class. Sampled 16 July 2026: excellent. A lake with no lifeguard and steep sides is a different risk from the water quality.
Ei ole võimalik hinnata — cannot be assessed
swim with care
Joaoru rand (the city beach)Narva's own beach on the river, below the castle. The best four-year class of the four, and the sample of 16 July 2026 was rated excellent.
Väga hea — excellent
good to swim
Narva-Jõesuu randEstonia's longest beach, 13 km downstream at the river mouth. Graded good over four years; the sample of 15 July 2026 was rated excellent. It failed on intestinal enterococci during the wet summer of 2025, which is what the four-year grade is carrying.Turns first after rain
Hea — good
good to swim
Estonia grades bathing water on the EU's four-year scale — excellent, good, sufficient, poor — so the class describes four seasons of samples, not today's water. A place that is too new to have four seasons behind it is published as 'cannot be assessed', which is not a warning and not a clean bill of health either.
The rule that surprises people
Estonia grades bathing water on the EU's four-year scale — excellent, good, sufficient, poor — so the class describes four seasons of samples, not today's water. A place that is too new to have four seasons behind it is published as 'cannot be assessed', which is not a warning and not a clean bill of health either.
Why rain changes it
The grades are measured on the sample day, and heavy rain changes the water the same afternoon: Narva-Jõesuu and Sillamäe both failed on intestinal enterococci after the downpours of summer 2025. The river mouth is where a whole catchment arrives, so it turns first. After a day or two of hard rain, waiting beats reading the grade.
Two different things
The class is a snapshot from a lab sample taken now and then — not a live status. The rain figure is a heuristic, not a test: it tells you stormwater may be running, never that the water is clean or dirty. Neither is a guarantee; after heavy rain, give it a day or two and favour the beaches graded highest.
The Health Board samples each bathing place roughly every two weeks through the season and publishes every result. The four-year class is recalculated once a year, after the season ends.
Rain updated 12 Oct, 14:07. The rain figure is a weather-model estimate for the shore around Narva, useful for spotting a recent soaking, not an exact total. Weather data by Open-Meteo (CC BY 4.0). The bathing-water grades are from the source listed above.