When to go — the almanac windows, This week and The year
The almanac answers when to walk out of the door, not just what conditions are now. It builds windows — a start and end time for shelling, the Bird Island walk, dolphins, ghost crabs, turtle hatch watch, right whales, shorebirds, a near-full moonrise over the ocean, sunrise and sunset — for the next seven days, from tide predictions, sunrise, dusk and moonrise. Each window’s timing is exact (astronomy and harmonics) and its rating is a forecast for that hour, so treat the clock as reliable and the score as an outlook. No window predicts an animal; they predict the conditions for looking. The same windows feed three places in the app: Times & seasons and the Next window card on Today, the When to go screen (all windows), and the This week planner (the same windows arranged by day, plus weather, surf and swimming per day). The year is a separate month-by-month guide to what is worth coming back for.
Where to find it
Section titled “Where to find it”- Nature tab → Times & seasons: the single best window in the next 12 hours, then All windows — next 7 days (the When to go screen), This week, day by day (the planner), The year, month by month, and this month’s headline.
- Today tab → Next window shows the same next window; Best days this week is the door to the planner.
- Search “almanac”, “when to go”, “this week” or “best day” — see Search.
The ten kinds of window
Section titled “The ten kinds of window”| Window | When it is generated | Timed by | Certainty |
|---|---|---|---|
| Shelling | Every daylight low tide | 2 hours before low water to 1 hour after; peak at low water | Forecast |
| Bird Island & the Kindred Spirit mailbox | Every daylight low tide | 2 hours either side of low water | Forecast |
| Dolphin watch | Twice a day, all year | First light (sunrise to +2 h) and Last light (2 h before sunset to sunset) | Forecast |
| Ghost crabs | April to October, every night | 30 minutes after civil dusk, for 3 hours | Deterministic |
| Turtle hatch watch | Tonight and tomorrow night while the turtle season is in a hatching phase (July to mid-November) | Civil dusk, for 4 hours | Deterministic |
| Right whale watch | Peak calving season (December to March), today and tomorrow only | 2 to 6 hours after sunrise | Forecast |
| Shorebirds | Northbound April–May and southbound July–October, one per day at a daylight low | 1.5 hours either side of low water | Forecast |
| Moonrise over the ocean | When the moon is at least 85% lit and rises over open water (azimuth 75°–155°) | 15 minutes before to 45 minutes after moonrise | Deterministic |
| Sunrise | Every day the forecast covers | 30 minutes before to 20 minutes after sunrise | Forecast |
| Sunset | Every day the forecast covers | 20 minutes before to 30 minutes after sunset | Forecast |
Deterministic windows are timed by tide, sun and moon only — the time is exact and can be alerted on. Forecast windows are timed the same way but rated on the weather forecast, so the rating can move. (A deterministic window’s rating can still use the forecast — ghost crabs lose points on a cold or wet night — but what it promises does not depend on it.) The distinction is why the Alerts screen can offer tide and launch alerts but not a “good sunset tonight” alert — see Alerts and notifications. The window detail screen states which kind it is at the bottom: “Tide, sun and moon only — this time is exact and can be alerted on.” or “Timed by tide and sun, rated on the forecast — the rating can move.”
How a window is rated
Section titled “How a window is rated”Every window starts at 50 and adds or subtracts named points, printed verbatim under Why on the detail screen — for shelling, lines such as “…ft low — very low water” (+17), “…ft spring range — maximum beach uncovered” (+13) and “Early low — you’ll be ahead of the crowd” (+10). The result is a score from 0 to 100 and a rating: great (75 and above), good (55–74), fair (35–54) or poor (below 35).
Points compare a window to a typical one of its own kind, not to everything else on the beach. Anything true of every occurrence scores zero: it is always dark during the ghost crab window and always migration season during a shorebird window, so those facts are listed with no points rather than lifting every score by the same amount. Moon phase is not scored alongside tidal range for shelling, because the moon is why the range is what it is.
Where nothing varies at all — a turtle hatch window in peak season — the window is unscored: the list shows in season instead of a number, and the detail screen shows the reasoning with no rating, because a number there would be invented. Only this day’s forecast counts: a day the weather forecast cannot reach earns no weather or surf points, rather than inheriting today’s.
The full point tables live in How the app judges things.
The When to go screen
Section titled “The When to go screen”- Next — the best window starting in the next 12 hours (best, not soonest: a mediocre window in an hour does not outrank a great one this evening; unscored windows only win if nothing else is on).
- Windows grouped by day — Today, Tomorrow, then the day name — each row showing the title, the time span and a score badge (or in season).
- Sun & moon — sunrise, sunset, the moon’s illumination and phase, moonrise and moonset with compass direction, and a note when the moon rises over open water tonight (“Full moon rising over open water tonight.” or “The moon rises over open water tonight rather than behind the mainland.”).
Tap a window for its detail: the subtitle, day and time span, Peak at the tide extreme or sun event, the Outlook badge, Why, What this actually claims (the window’s own statement of what it guarantees — for shelling, “This scores how much beach the tide uncovers and whether the sea has been delivering. It cannot tell you what is actually lying there.”), On the beach guidance, and any caveat (the Bird Island walk warns: “Start back before the tide turns. The channel at Mad Inlet shifts from year to year and water crosses the flats well before high tide.”).
This week — the planner
Section titled “This week — the planner”The This week screen answers the question a visitor renting a house for a week asks on the drive down: which morning is the shelling, and which day is the washout. It has a Best days section — one row per kind of window appearing this week, naming the day it is best on with its rating — then seven day sections, today first, each showing:
| Row | What it shows | How far it reaches |
|---|---|---|
| High / low temperature, Rain (highest daylight chance) | NWS forecast | All week; from the fourth day the rain figure is captioned coarse model because the gridpoint is being filled from a coarser model run |
| Water | Water temperature, captioned measured (the buoy off this beach) for today, modelled (a ~25 km grid) for later days | All week, but only today is a measurement |
| Surf | Surf height and rip current risk from the NWS Surf Zone Forecast | The first two days are the forecaster’s “Ocean Isle Beach West” row — this beach. The next days come from the extended paragraph for the whole of Coastal Brunswick and are captioned whole zone, not this beach. After the forecast stops the row is absent — nothing is ever carried forward from the day before |
| Swimming | Good, Caution or Poor with a reason | Poor on high rip risk whatever the water temperature; caution on moderate risk or water below 68°F; absent when there is neither a rip forecast nor a temperature, and also when there is no rip forecast and the water is under 75°F |
| Thunder | Peak chance and the hours holding it | All week |
| Low water | Low tide times only — the question this screen answers is always about low water; the full table is on the Water tab | Exact all week |
| Sun | Sunrise–sunset | Exact all week |
| Picks | Up to three almanac windows starting that day, best first, one per kind, each opening the window’s detail | Unscored windows are left out of the picks |
The Best days rows are the almanac’s own scores, grouped by day: “best day for shelling” means the best shelling low of the week, not that shelling beats everything else on it. Ties go to the earlier day.
The year, month by month
Section titled “The year, month by month”The year lists all twelve months with a headline and three or four items each — for example January, “Right whale calving season, and the year’s best shelling”; May, “Turtle nesting opens; peak northbound migration”; August, “Peak hatching”; September, “Hatching, migration, and the best beach weather of the year”. The current month is tagged now, and the same month’s headline appears under Times & seasons on the Nature tab. It is curated from published natural history for this coast, not computed, and does not change with the forecast.