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Plan your beach trip!
If you're heading out to the beach today, be sure to check the current status at kingcounty.gov/swimbeach. But if you're planning ahead to next week or later, this page can help you find a beach that's likely to have low bacteria and good water quality. Fortunately, most of our beaches are great places to swim and play in the water!
The map below shows the beaches where we tested the water in 2019-2023. The color of each dot shows how often the beach historically had good water quality during those summers, ranging from dark purple (good water quality nearly all the time = fewer bacteria problems) to bright yellow (good water quality less of the time = more bacteria problems). And good news -- 16 of the 26 beaches we tested had good water quality at least 95% of the time. It's easy to find a healthy beach!
Don’t forget to check https://kingcounty.gov/swimbeach before you go! And visit Public Health's water safety website for cold water safety tips, lifeguard info, life jacket resources, and more.
[MAP]
Some of the beaches we test today are not this map because we started testing them in 2024. We will add Angle Lake Beach and Fivemile Lake Beach in future years, when we have more data.
Planning ahead
And now that you’ve checked out the map, did you find out your favorite beach is one of the few beaches with a frequent poop problem in the past? You can make a backup plan by using the map to find a nearby beach that had good water quality just in case your favorite beach is closed on the day you want to visit.
These historical data will give you some idea of which beaches will be open and a healthy place to swim. A beach with consistently good water quality in the past is less likely to be closed than one that had more problems. But remember, there will always be exceptions to these patterns. Always go to https://kingcounty.gov/swimbeach to check the latest status. It's much more important to know what's going on now than what happened years ago.
And don't use these results to decide where to swim during the rainy season. We only tested the water during the summer, and water quality patterns can be very different during the winter. Instead, stay out of the water at all beaches for at least 24 hours after heavy rain. A beach that usually had good water quality during the summer is still likely to have poor water quality after heavy rain.
Understanding the numbers
We included water test results from 2019 through 2023 for the main swimming season of June 15–September 15. We used the current bacteria protocol (updated in 2023) to evaluate whether each week had good or poor water quality. And then we calculated the percent of weeks each beach had good water quality.