Paddle Conditions | Water Sport Scoring App

Who it helps

Kayakers, stand-up paddleboarders and swimmers who want to know whether the water is worth the drive. Without Paddle Conditions, checking a spot means opening separate sites for river flow, wind, air quality, reservoir levels and tides, then guessing how they add up.

What paddlers get

One score for every spot

Live water, weather and air quality data combine into a single 0 to 100 score with a plain GO or not. The score adjusts to the activity, so wind counts for more on a paddleboard and water temperature counts for more on a swim. The app names the factor holding the score back and the best time to go.

Hour-by-hour outlook

Charts show how the score, wind and temperature are expected to change through the day, so a paddler can pick the calm window instead of guessing.

Public spot pages

Curated public pages for popular spots, such as Lake Natoma and Folsom Lake, show the typical score, current conditions and a map. Anyone can check them before signing up.

Home Assistant integration

A free Home Assistant integration puts the score and conditions on a smart home dashboard, next to the rest of the household’s automations.

Sign-in built with security in mind

• Sign-in never puts tokens in web addresses, so they stay out of browser history and shared links.
• New accounts verify their email address before they are used.
• Login attempts are rate limited to slow down password guessing.

What it does for the business

Paddlers get one answer instead of five tabs, which gives them a reason to check before every trip. Free public spot pages and the Home Assistant integration bring new people in, and the premium web app turns regular users into subscribers. Security is part of the product: people trust an app with their account when sign-in is handled carefully.

The pattern underneath, several public data sources combined into one decision score, fits any business whose customers check several sites before making one choice. The custom web application and API development pages cover how that kind of build is scoped, and SacGroceries applies a similar idea to grocery prices.

For your technical team

• React and TypeScript web app on a Fastify API with Drizzle ORM.
• Data from USGS streamflow, CDEC reservoir and water quality sensors, NOAA and NWS weather, AirNow and NOAA tides, pulled through a shared cache keyed by water body.
• Auth keeps tokens out of URLs, requires email verification and rate limits login attempts.
• Public spot pages cover a curated list of water bodies, with Leaflet maps.
• The Home Assistant integration is written in Python, published through HACS and kept in its own public repository, separate from the API.
• Stripe handles premium subscriptions.