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Guide

Reading an Oregon coast tide table

Checked September 12, 2026 against NOAA Tides and Currents, the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife (ODFW) and the Oregon King Tides Project.

The Tides tile shows NOAA’s predictions for the stations on your stretch of coast: ten stations from Astoria to Neskowin, eight stations from Lincoln City to Florence, ten stations from Reedsport to Brookings. Here is what the heights are measured from, why two places on one bay give different times, and when the table will be wrong.

A tide table is a prediction, not an observation. NOAA predicts only the tide the moon and sun make. It says it cannot predict what wind, rain, freshwater runoff and other short-term weather will do, and its predictions leave out storm surge. A storm or a river in flood will beat the table.

Heights are measured from MLLW

Every height on the tile is in feet above mean lower low water (MLLW). Most days on this coast have two low tides, one lower than the other. MLLW is the average height of the lower of the two, taken over NOAA’s 19-year reference period. It is the zero on U.S. nautical charts and in NOAA’s predictions.

So 0.0 ft is not the lowest the water goes. It is an average low. A low tide that drops below that average prints as a negative number, such as −1.2 ft: a minus tide.

Minus tides and clamming

The lower the tide, the more beach and tideflat is uncovered. ODFW says the best clamming is on low and minus tides, and for razor clams to be on the beach about two hours before the low. Before you dig, check the shellfish closures and call the ODA hotline, 1-800-448-2474. The tide table says when you can dig, not whether you may.

Why times differ up the bay and the rivers

NOAA makes predictions two ways. A harmonic station has enough years of measurements that its tide is calculated directly. A subordinate station had only a short-term gauge, so NOAA takes the high and low tides at a reference station and shifts them by a set time and height. The reference station is one whose tide behaves like the subordinate’s, and it need not be the nearest.

Coos Bay shows why it matters. NOAA predicts both Empire and the Coos Bay waterfront from the Charleston gauge near the bay entrance. High tide at Empire comes about 40 minutes after Charleston, and at the Coos Bay waterfront about an hour and a half after, and both rise a little less. Farther north the pairings reach farther: Taft on Siletz Bay, the Coast Guard station in Newport, Toledo, and every Tillamook County station on the board (Brighton and Nehalem on Nehalem Bay, Barview and Hoquarten Slough on Tillamook Bay, the Nestucca entrance) are all predicted from Crescent City, California, and Florence’s Old Town from Charleston, with high tide at Toledo about an hour after Crescent City’s, at Hoquarten Slough in Tillamook nearly two hours after, and at Old Town about 45 minutes after Charleston’s. On the Columbia, Warrenton’s Skipanon River is predicted from the Astoria gauge. The tile gives each station its own row, and puts the ones up the bay and the rivers behind a fold, for that reason. Use the station nearest to where you will be standing.

Subordinate stations give high and low times only. Anything between them, including the curve on the tile, is an estimate.

Some towns are special cases. Gearhart, Seaside and Cannon Beach have no NOAA station: the open beach has no gauge, so they read Hammond, the reference station at the mouth of the Columbia, and say so by name. Yachats has no NOAA station of any kind, so its page reads Waldport on Alsea Bay, about nine miles north, and says so by name. Florence has two rows on purpose: the Coast Guard pier, a reference station two miles down river beside the bar people cross, and Old Town, where the marina is.

King tides

“King tide” is not a scientific term; NOAA calls it a popular name for exceptionally high tides. In Oregon they come in early winter, when the moon is closest to the Earth and the Earth closest to the sun. They are in the predictions like any other tide. What the predictions do not include is a storm on top of one. The Oregon King Tides Project, run by CoastWatch and the Oregon Coastal Management Program, publishes each winter’s dates and asks people to photograph how far the water reaches.

Checking what the water is doing

Five of the stations on the boards have live NOAA gauges that report what the water is actually doing: Astoria at Tongue Point, Garibaldi on Tillamook Bay, South Beach on Yaquina Bay, Charleston and Port Orford. Compare the measured level with the predicted one to see how far off the table is running today. South Beach and Port Orford also report water temperature and wind; Astoria reports wind and air temperature but not water temperature; Garibaldi reports water level only.

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