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King tide dates

Updated October 23, 2026.

A king tide is the highest high tide in one lunar month, about 29 and a half days. Most coasts have two spring tides in that month, one at the new moon and one at the full moon. One of those two highs reaches farther than the other. That taller high is the king tide. The opposite is the neap with the smallest rise and fall, around the first quarter and the last quarter, when less water moves in and out.

The date is not one clock for every harbor. The moon sets the window. The shape of the coast sets the day and the height. Two towns on the same shore can share the new moon and still print a different high, a day apart. Each station page reads its own stored tides and names the highest high in the coming month, and the day in the coming two weeks with the smallest rise and fall.

What rises with a king tide

A king tide is not a storm. It is the predicted high from the moon and the sun. The trouble starts when something else is added to it.

A dock, a low road, or the edge of a marsh that stays dry at neap can cover at a king tide. An onshore wind, or a falling barometer, holds water in the harbor and can push that high over a seawall the tide table did not show. More water has to enter and leave in the same number of hours, so the current in an inlet, a gut, or a creek mouth is stronger. The low on the other side of that high is often a very low one. Bars and rocks that stay covered at neap show themselves.

On a United States station the flood gauge, when the page has one, is the water that is there. The king tide line is the prediction. If a storm is in the forecast, read both. In Australia and New Zealand the chart is the prediction only. Wind is not inside that number.

How to use the dates

The table lists the next new moons, full moons, and quarter moons. A new moon or a full moon is a king tide window: the highest high of that stretch falls on that day or the day beside it. A first quarter or a last quarter is the opposite, the smallest rise and fall. The height in feet or metres is not in this table, because it belongs to one station. Open the town, then read the king tide line under the tide table.

Coming dates

These are the primary phases of the moon through 2027, in universal time, from the U.S. Naval Observatory. A harbor can still be on the day before when the clock there has not caught up. Open the town for the time and the height at that station.

Read next

• Spring tides and neap tides
• How tides work
• Best times to fish a tide

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