Live webcams provide crystal balls to getaways

Before turning the key, putting your foot on the gas pedal and heading out of the Bay Area in summer, many would love to have a crystal ball as to what awaits.

Smoke? Haze? Fog? Or can you get the chance of clear skies, calm water, plenty of space? A network of webcams can be your crystal ball.

Before leaving home, or while en route using your phone, you can tune in to cams to get live views of the real-time conditions. Here are examples from Sunday, and the links: Point Reyes National Seashore: On Sunday morning, dead fog socked in Point Reyes Lighthouse. Link through: www.nps.gov. At Inverness, same thing. Link through: https://www.webcams.travel Lake Tahoe: Blue skies, high clouds over the Sierra crest and haze makes Tahoe less than pristine, but still a go-to destination compared with so many other areas inundated with smoke. Link through: https://tahoetopia.com Yosemite Valley: The tentative reopening to Yosemite Valley is Friday, but the cam at Tunnel View toward El Capitan and through the valley to Half Dome shows a wall of smoke with zero visibility. Link through: www.nps.gov/yose Tuolumne Meadows, Yosemite: At an elevation of 8,600 feet along Tioga Road at Tuolumne Meadows, the sky overhead was blue, good clarity, with distant haze low on the horizon. Link through: www.nps.gov/yose Mount Shasta: The cold air at the upper levels of Mount Shasta sucked smoke from the Carr Fire to the south and created a dense layer in the valley with poor visibility along Interstate 5. Link through: www.snowcrest.net/camera Big Sur: The cam at Nepenthe restaurant in the heart of Big Sur showed low, dense fog along the beach that spreads about a mile inland, with the coastal mountains then breaking out above the stratus. A deck with a view at Nepenthe, for instance, was in the clear; same with trails in Ventana. Link through: www.nepenthe.com Mendocino coast: At Agate Cove, a thin stratus deck was burning off by late morning, good visibility. Link through: www.agatecove.com Monterey Bay: Looking good: calm seas, very light surf, good visibility and high overcast. Link through: www. montereybayaquarium.org