Tide chart: reading a local tide chart, and finding the tide chart near me, tide charts near me, tide table near me, tide tables near me, tide schedule near me, tide level near me or ocean tide near me

How to read tide charts properly

1. Find the station, not the beach. A tide chart belongs to a tide station, and the station is rarely where you are standing. Every place page here names its NOAA station and how far away it is, because a table read from a station 30km up the coast is still the nearest published one, not a local measurement.
2. Read the datum before the number. US charts are given in feet above MLLW, the mean of the lower low waters. That is the reference the number is measured from, and it is why a low water can read below zero: MLLW is an average, so roughly half the lower low waters fall under it.
3. Take the range, not just the peak. The useful figure for most plans is the difference between the high and the low either side of the time you care about. A 2 ft range means the water barely moves; a 12 ft range means a flat you can walk at low water is under your chest four hours later.
4. Allow for the weather. Atmospheric pressure, wind and river flow all move real water levels away from the prediction, commonly by half a foot and sometimes by a great deal more. A hard onshore wind piles water up; high pressure pushes it down.
5. Never use it to navigate. These pages republish predictions for people planning a walk, a cast or a swim. Anything that floats needs the official NOAA tables and local knowledge, and this site says so on every page.

Safety and the limits of a prediction

Common questions

Why does the tide chart show a negative number?

Heights are measured from MLLW, the mean lower low water, which is an average of the lower of each day's two low waters. Because it is an average, about half of the lower low waters fall below it, and those are printed as negative feet. A minus tide is simply a lower-than-average low water, and it is the one to go tide pooling on.

How accurate is a tide chart?

The astronomical part is extremely accurate and is computed years in advance. The times of high and low water are usually right to within a few minutes at a reference station. Heights are the part that moves: weather and pressure routinely shift real water levels a few tenths of a foot either way, and a storm can shift them by feet.

Is the chart for my exact beach?

No. It is for the tide station named on the page. Along an open coast the difference over a few kilometres is small; inside a bay, a river mouth or a narrow inlet it can be large in both time and height. That is why the distance to the station is printed rather than hidden.

Why are there two high tides some days and one on others?

Most US coasts are semidiurnal and get two highs and two lows in each lunar day of about 24 hours 50 minutes. Because that is longer than a solar day, the pattern drifts later each day, and a day occasionally holds only one of a given event. Parts of the Gulf of Mexico are diurnal and genuinely get one of each.

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