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Hide tide or low tide in the morning?

goodtimes5

goodtimes5

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Apr 4, 2004
778
0
Bay Area
I tried googling this question, but too many obscure links. So I came to my number two best place for information.

So, is it high tide or low tide in the morning?
 
I'm pretty sure it's all variable depending upon the position of the earth with respect to the sun and moon. So there's no way of really associating high or low tide with morning and night.
 
Hi from the UK
Interesting question! I've just looked up some tide tables here and attach a representative one (from Dover) for today.

View attachment 49739

It seems that the majority of obvious morning tides are High Water, with one every seven days (corresponding to the about-noon tide HW) being a Low Water.

Having said that, my bath this morning is not very full - hmmmm. :)

Hope this helps.
 
Technically, you have both a high and a low tide each morning (midnight - Noon) and a high and a low each afternoon.evening (Noon- Midnight) but since the lunar cycle is not an even 12 hours, the cycle time creeps around the clock

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tide

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tide_clock

Wow, who would've thought it was a weekly pattern?
Click to expand...
The pattern is WAY longer than weekly, because you have both the Lunar (12.4 hours) and the Solar (12 hours) tides, plus the distance between the Earth and moon and the Earth and the Sun constantly vary.

Because of the local sea depth and geography, the height, lag behind the moon, and interval between tides is different at every location on Earth.
 
Yeah, it's not that simple of a question. CanadaRAM is right. I work on an island/boat so I have to know the tide everyday and even include information about it in the tours I give. Where I am, Long Island Sound, CT, the tide period is 6 hours and 12 minutes. This means that it will be high tide, and then 6 hours and 12 minutes later, it will be dead low. So as you can see, the 12 minutes there throws off the whole even schedule which results in different times everyday!
 
It's probably also worth noting that both the full moon and the new moon cause extremes in both tides.
 
Every 6 hours and 12 minutes the tide changes, so its not always the same every day. As the moon waxes and wanes the hight of the tide will change. It all works on the magnetic pull the moon has over the ocean.
 
It also has a lot to do with the geography of the land. For example, in the case of an inlet it will take a certain amount of time for the water to enter/exit the inlet. This can cause a bay or other such body of water to have a tide that is different from the ocean time by several hours.
 
CanadaRAM said:
Technically, you have both a high and a low tide each morning (midnight - Noon) and a high and a low each afternoon.evening (Noon- Midnight) but since the lunar cycle is not an even 12 hours, the cycle time creeps around the clock

The pattern is WAY longer than weekly, because you have both the Lunar (12.4 hours) and the Solar (12 hours) tides, plus the distance between the Earth and moon and the Earth and the Sun constantly vary.

Because of the local sea depth and geography, the height, lag behind the moon, and interval between tides is different at every location on Earth.
Click to expand...

Canada RAM, is there anything you don't know?

u da man..:D
 
There really isn't a pattern, It is constantly moving. A high tide today will be about 45 mins later tomorrow. So lets say you wake up at 8 am and the tide is high. If you wake up at 8 tomorrow the tide will have another 45 minutes before it is at its highest point.

The tides cycle 4 times in a 24 hour period. High then low then high then low, each 6 hrs and 12 minutes apart.

So if its high at 8:00 am it would be low at 2:12 pm then high at 8:24 pm and low at 2:36 am and high at 8:48 am
 
MacNut said:
There really isn't a pattern, It is constantly moving. A high tide today will be about 45 mins later tomorrow. So lets say you wake up at 8 am and the tide is high. If you wake up at 8 tomorrow the tide will have another 45 minutes before it is at its highest point.

The tides cycle 4 times in a 24 hour period. High then low then high then low, each 6 hrs and 12 minutes apart.

So if its high at 8:00 am it would be low at 2:12 pm then high at 8:24 pm and low at 2:36 am and high at 8:48 am
Click to expand...

Where I work we resell tide data, (among other things) Every year we buy a CD from NOAA with a years worth of data and then digest it for republication.

The timing is also location specific. It depends on the shape of the inlet, the distance inland. New York and Philadelphia are geographically close but their tides are 180 degrees out of phase! There is an hour difference between Manhattan and Brooklyn.
 
MacNut said:
Every 6 hours and 12 minutes the tide changes, so its not always the same every day. As the moon waxes and wanes the hight of the tide will change. It all works on the magnetic pull the moon has over the ocean.
Click to expand...
It's gravitational pull, not magnetism, and the moon isn't the only factor. The sun has roughly 50% of the gravitational pull on the earth of the moon and together, the force of the two affect the tides, which is why tidal movement is most pronounced during new and full moons.
 
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