English
Four stations, updated from the Canadian Hydrographic Service. The table is the easy part. What follows it is the part nobody prints: which beaches change, at which height, and how fast.
Next four days
Low water of 1.01 m at 6:27 am is an ordinary low. Enough sand appears at Kitsilano and Jericho to walk the tideline, not enough to expose the far flats.
High water of 4.42 m at 2:27 pm is near the top of the local range. Under the cliffs at Wreck Beach the dry sand nearly disappears, and the logs at Third Beach end up in the water.
The reading behind Kitsilano, Jericho, Spanish Banks and the seawall. Heights here run a little above Point Atkinson and arrive a few minutes later.
The open-water reference for the North Shore: Ambleside, Dundarave, Whytecliff and the mouth of Howe Sound.
Victoria sits behind the Juan de Fuca Strait and runs a much smaller range than Vancouver - often under two metres in a day.
Open Pacific. The biggest range on this page, and the number that decides whether Long Beach is a beach or a channel.
Heights are metres above chart datum, the level of the lowest normal tide, which is why a number never goes far below zero. Times are Pacific and already adjusted for daylight saving. Source: Canadian Hydrographic Service water level predictions.
Two highs, two lows, and none of them equal
This coast runs a mixed semidiurnal tide: roughly two high waters and two low waters a day, and the pair are not the same size. One high is noticeably bigger than the other, and the same goes for the lows. That is why the table above shows four numbers a day that look inconsistent. They are not. The big low and the big high usually sit about twelve hours apart.
The cycle also slides later by about fifty minutes a day, because it follows the moon rather than the clock. A low tide that was convenient this morning is inconvenient by the end of the week. Plan the tide-dependent thing first and the rest of the day around it, not the other way round.
What the height means on each beach
Spanish Banks and Jericho: the flats
These two shelve so gently that the tide height decides what kind of place they are. Under about a metre the water pulls back several hundred metres and leaves firm ridged sand you can walk on in bare feet, with warm shallow pools left behind. Above three metres there is barely a beach at Spanish Banks at all, just a strip below the grass. Neither state is better; they are different outings, and the table tells you which one you are getting.
Wreck Beach: the one where it matters
Wreck sits under the cliffs below UBC, down a long wooden staircase. At a high water over about four and a half metres the dry sand narrows to very little in places, and walking the length of the beach stops being possible without wading. Nobody gets trapped, the stairs are always there, but a plan that involved strolling a kilometre of sand turns into standing in one spot. Check the high before you go down, not after.
Third Beach and English Bay
Both keep sand at any tide. The difference is the log line: at a big high the water reaches the drift logs, which is exactly where everyone has put their towel. At a low the sand in front of the logs doubles.
Tide pools want a low, not just any low
The good pools on this coast, Botanical Beach past Port Renfrew above all, only open up on a genuinely low tide. Aim for the days when the table shows a low in the range that drains the shelf, and be standing there an hour before it, not at the time printed. The window is the hour either side, and the drive is long enough that getting it wrong costs the day.
Tofino, and why surfers read this table twice
Tofino swings through the biggest range on this page. At Chesterman and Long Beach the same swell behaves like a different wave at the top and bottom of the tide, and locals pick the window rather than the hour. Storm watching in winter is the same calculation from the other direction: the spectacle is a low-pressure system arriving on a rising tide, when the water is already high and the waves have nowhere left to spend.
There is a safety line here that is worth stating plainly. On an outer-coast beach the water does not arrive as a tide you can watch creeping in. It arrives as sets, and a set on a rising tide reaches much further up the sand than the one before it. Logs on that beach weigh tonnes and move. Watch from above the logs, not among them. See storm watching and surfing on this coast.
Crabbing, prawning and shellfish
Crab traps off Ambleside, Cates Park and the piers work around the turn of the tide, when the current slackens and the animals move. Slack water sits near the printed high or low, not between them. You need a tidal waters licence, and the size and species rules are enforced; the licence, the seasons and the prices are on the fishing page.
Digging shellfish is a different matter and the tide table is not the document that keeps you safe. Paralytic shellfish poisoning closures are issued separately by area and they are not seasonal, not optional and not visible in the water. Read the shellfish page before you dig anything, every single time.
The mistakes that cost people an afternoon
Reading the wrong station. Victoria runs a much smaller range than Vancouver, and Tofino a much larger one. A Tofino low of half a metre and a Victoria low of half a metre are not the same event. Use the station nearest the sand you are standing on.
Treating the printed time as the event. The turn is gradual. The useful window is roughly an hour either side, which is good news for planning and bad news for anyone who arrives fifty minutes late.
Forgetting the tide is not the water level. Wind and atmospheric pressure push the real surface above or below the prediction, sometimes by tens of centimetres. A winter storm with a low-pressure centre and a southeast wind stacks water against this coast. Predictions are astronomy; weather is added on top.
Assuming the mudflats are firm. Boundary Bay and parts of the Fraser delta go out a very long way at low water and the surface is soft. The flats at Spanish Banks are sand and hold your weight; delta mud is not the same material.
Where else the water level shows up
Ocean temperature and the heat map live on the BC weather and ocean page. Ferry sailings and space are on the BC Ferries page. Beaches, lifeguard seasons and where the water is survivable are on the beaches guide, and the cold-water warning that goes with all of it is on the safety page.
