Florida King Tide Calendar

On most of Florida’s Atlantic coast the highest tides of the coming year come in late October 2026: 3.65 ft at Miami Beach on October 27. On the Gulf it is summer: Clearwater Beach’s highest, 3.70 ft, is on August 2, 2027. Pick your beach for its own dates, ranked, from NOAA’s predictions.

How to use it

Pick a beach, inlet or bay: the tool takes NOAA’s predicted high tides there for the next 12 months, ranks them, and lists the top 10 (or 20, or 30) with the date, the time and whether the Sun is up. Under the list, the highest tide of every month as a bar shows the season they cluster in, and the answer names the next of the top ones still to come. Heights are in feet (or metres) above mean lower low water, the average of each day’s lowest tide, at the NOAA station the beach uses.

What a king tide is

There is no height that makes a tide a king tide. NOAA’s own words: “A King Tide is a non-scientific term people often use to describe exceptionally high tides.” And on when they come: “Higher than normal tides typically occur during a new or full moon and when the Moon is at its perigee, or during specific seasons around the country.” So the tool does not draw a line: it ranks the highest of the year and lets the season show itself.

Spring and neap tides

NOAA: “A spring tide—popularly known as a “King Tide”—refers to the ‘springing forth’ of the tide during new and full moon.” The name “has nothing to do with the season of spring”, and “spring tides occur twice each lunar month all year long”. A week later come the neap tides, when the sun and moon are at right angles: “high tides are a little lower and low tides are a little higher than average.” Under the ranking, the tool matches each new and full moon of the U.S. Naval Observatory’s calendar to the biggest daily range at your beach within two days (the day’s highest high minus its lowest low), each quarter moon to the smallest, and lists the next eight.

How much bigger the spring tides are depends on the beach, from the same predictions (the new and full moons and the quarter moons of the year in the table below):

At Clearwater Beach the spring tides more than double the neap tides’ range; at Amelia Island the range is big every day and the springs add about a quarter. On the Panhandle the moon’s phase is not the whole story: at Pensacola Beach the last quarter of October 3, 2026 is matched to a 1.57 ft range, more than the new moon a week later (1.52 ft).

The highest tides of the year, beach by beach

From NOAA’s predictions for September 25, 2026 to September 24, 2027 (a year of the file this tool holds; open the tool for the next 12 months from today):

The heights are not comparable from one beach to the next: each is measured from its own station’s mean lower low water, and the stations stand in different waters — Amelia Island’s at the mouth of the St. Marys River, Miami Beach’s at the entrance of Miami’s harbour.

Worked examples

• Miami Beach: all ten of the year’s highest predicted tides are in October (7) and November (3) of 2026, the highest 3.65 ft on October 27 at 9:37 AM, and all ten come in daylight.
• Clearwater Beach: the Gulf’s pattern is the summer’s — August 2027 (6), July 2027 (3) — the highest 3.70 ft on August 2 at 11:50 AM.
• Amelia Island: the top 10 split between October 2026 and the late spring of 2027, and only 4 of them are in daylight; the highest, 7.67 ft on June 4, 2027, comes at 9:04 PM.

Common mistakes

• Reading a prediction as a forecast of flooding. These are the astronomical tides NOAA predicts; wind, storms and air pressure push the real water higher or lower. For flooding, NOAA publishes its own high tide flooding outlook.
• Comparing heights between beaches. Each station’s zero is its own mean lower low water, so 3.65 ft at Miami Beach and 3.70 ft at Clearwater Beach are not the same water level.
• Looking for one date for all of Florida. The Atlantic’s highest tides and the Gulf’s come in different seasons, and even neighbouring stations rank differently.
• Going by the moon alone. A full or new moon raises the tides, but the highest of the year also depend on the season: the ranking already counts both.

On the beach

• Florida Tide Times: every high and low tide for the day you go
• Florida Beach Conditions: rip currents, sea temperature and red tide today
• Can you legally sleep on the beach in Florida?
• Can you own beachfront property in Florida? (the mean high tide line)
• The most visited beach in Florida