The WWW has an abundance of sources of meteorological information and data. NOAA Forecast information is available from the NOAA/National Weather Service (http://www.nws.noaa.gov) (NWS). The NOAA Sea Grant Coastal Recreation and Tourism Pages http://seagrant.oregonstate.edu/links/index.html provide links to hundreds of travel and tourism information sites. To get a sense of past weather conditions, you may want to check with the NOAA/National Climatic Data Center (http://lwf.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/ncdc.html), which is the archive for historical weather measurements. Many cities, states, and local governments now have websites that usually include a link to a source of local weather conditions and forecasts.

Although ocean conditions vary from year to year, water temperatures are less variable than air temperatures. Therefore,
climatological average water temperatures are useful in planning  beach activities such as fishing and swimming. Monthly (or
two-week) average water temperatures for dozens of locations around the U.S. coast are available from the NODC Beach Temperature
Guide (http://www.nodc.noaa.gov/dsdt/cwtg/index.html).

For Great Lakes water temperatures: http://coastwatch.glerl.noaa.gov/cwdata2/lct/glsea.gif