Southern California Clueless landlubber

[kghigh]

First off, I live in the middle of the prairies and am completely (COMPLETELY) land locked.

Next, I am leaving in four days! So I am starting to freak out a bit that I am not completely organized. I still have to program the GPS!

I am trying to plan our "free day" from the amusement parks. I want to take the kids to go see the tide pools at Laguna Beach. All the research I do says go at low tide. I cannot for the life of me figure out what any of the tide reports or wave reports mean. Can somebody give me a crash course on how to read these things and what I am looking for? Do I need to aim for a specific time of day or is one day better than the other? I have either Aug 26/27/28/29/30 to choose from.

Thanks in advance.

 

[usnuzuloose]

Mid morning is your best time. As the evening the tide comes in. Laguna Beach is so pretty. I used to work in LB and used to watch the dolphins while I worked. Don't freak out. It is a vacation and meant to be enjoyed and not stressed out.

 

[PrincessInOz]

Tide times do vary depending on the time of year, rotation of the earth compared to the sun and the moon.

There are a number of charts that you can look up in order to work out when high tide and low tide will be. There are usually two high tides per 24 hour period and two low tides per 24 hour period (but not always). The charts will list both the tide set times for high tides and low tides. Some will even mention how high/low the tide will be on those days and tide set times. From memory the tide levels are marked against a standard level known as datum. So, when you look at the tide levels, the height will be a comparison against this standard horizontal level. I think it's an indication of how strong the gravitational pull of the sun/moon is at that particular time of tide.


I did check up one reference for Laguna Beach, link: http://www.myforecast.com/bin/tide_extended.m?city=11855&metric=true&tideLocationID=T1534


For your dates, it would appear that afternoon would be best for low tide.

• Tue 26 Daytime High tide is 10.33 am. Afternoon low tide is at 4.16 pm.
• Wed 27 Daytime High tide is 10.58 am. The afternoon low tide is 4.51 pm
• Thu 28 Daytime High tide is 11.25 am and the afternoon low tide is 5.28 pm
• Fri 29 Daytime High tide is 11.55 am the afternoon low tide is 6.12 pm
• Sat 30 Daytime High tide is 12.29 pm the afternoon low tide is 7.07 pm.

Depending on how much time you wanted to spend at the rock pools, you could get there about 30 - 60 minutes before the low tide mark and explore until it was too dark to see anything.

I think sunset is running at 7.30 pm at SoCal at this time.

Have a great trip! And enjoy.

 

[kghigh]

Oh wow! That is so helpful. The website that you referenced is far better than what I was finding. Thank you so much!