Sources & methodology

Weather, sea conditions & estimates

Open-Meteo provides forecast and marine model data. Conditions are cached at the edge for 20 minutes. Marine data is sampled approximately 1.5 km offshore; it may not represent the water inside a cove. The beach score (0–10) combines model inputs; it is not a visitor review rating. Its wind and wave penalties account for each beach’s local opening, nearby headlands and islands, and directional terrain shelter, using OpenStreetMap coastlines and EU-DEM terrain via OpenTopoData. These adjustments are approximate; the displayed wind and wave forecasts remain the original model values. Buildings, trees and local wind funnelling are not modelled. Jellyfish risk is a heuristic based on sea temperature, onshore wind, currents and season, not an observation or official alert. Follow beach flags and local advice.

Official beach reports

The Govern de les Illes Balears · Gemelo Digital de Turismo provides lifeguard reports and modelled crowd levels through its public guest map API. The live app shows the last reported flag, jellyfish and currents, plus morning, midday and afternoon crowd levels on the source’s 1–5 scale. Every crowd period is labelled observed or modelled; it is not an exact headcount or occupancy percentage. Coverage varies by beach and season. The adapter caches responses for ten minutes and only displays observations for monitored beaches with an unambiguous source timestamp on the current Europe/Madrid date, at most four hours old. Missing, older and failed-source reports are unknown. Fetch time does not refresh an observation. The general GOIB legal notice describes attribution/share-alike reuse terms; individual source conditions still apply. This is an evolving public website API, without a verified stability guarantee. Reports do not replace beach flags or local instructions.

Beach access & transport

The compiled beach catalogue contains approximate coordinates, lengths, walking times, parking and facilities. Services vary by season. Recurring summer car restrictions and seasonal bus routes are planning guidance; confirm the current year's dates, booking and service with Mou-T Menorca. Transit notices are cached for one hour; missing notices do not confirm normal service.

Crowds, population & air traffic

Historical beach counts come from the Agència Menorca Reserva de Biosfera's published surveys. Popularity is a derived summer index, not live occupancy. Airport statistics come from Aena. Population present comes from OBSAM; the UI distinguishes published observations from our seasonal estimate. Population present includes residents and seasonal workers as well as visitors. It is not an exact tourist count. Flight origins from Aena's arrivals board count each arriving flight equally, recorded for past days and scheduled for the coming week, and do not identify passenger nationality or residence. Historical snapshots are refreshed manually and their coverage is shown in the live app.

Map & photographs

Coastline © OpenStreetMap contributors, ODbL. Historic terrain and road artwork is adapted from the Consell Insular / INESTUR cycling brochure (2009) and does not establish current routes. Photographs come from Wikimedia Commons and Flickr, under CC BY, CC BY-SA, CC0 or public-domain terms; each displayed photo includes its author, licence and original source.

Homepage social preview photograph: Paul Stephenson · CC BY 2.0 · Wikimedia Commons.

Webcams

Beach cameras open in a viewer on this site, with their operator credited beneath the picture. Seven live coastal feeds come from Avista Baleares / IB-RED, also listed by IB3’s public camera service. Son Bou imagery comes from SOCIB’s five beach cameras via Webcam Galore; the viewer switches between their views. A latest-image view is used if live video is unavailable. Nearby views at Cala Torret and Cap d’Artrutx may not show the beach itself. Check capture times on still images; availability depends on the operator.

Machine-readable data

The JSON beach catalogue and text catalogue contain static planning facts. Current model output is available at /api/conditions. Official source reports are at /api/beach-reports; add ?beach=son-bou for detailed fields such as currents. Treat generatedAt as fetch/transform time, use reportedAt for the observation time, check stale and error, and handle missing values as unknown. Neither a recent timestamp nor a high score guarantees safe swimming.

Beach guides and planning pages are in English, Spanish and Catalan. The live interface supports Catalan, English, Spanish, French, Italian, German, Dutch, Basque and Russian.