Tides

from_atozinc

I Don't even know if this is the right forum or not.

I have a silly question on tides -- so you have a high tide and low tide. And it can be 1 ft or 20 ft etc.

My question is : where normally is the tide measured from , is it measured from a point 50 metres away from the edge of the shore or something else entirely ?

from_atozinc

Anyone ?

Manzoor14

By no means a tide expert here, but from what I remember (and this could be completely wrong, been years since I done Geography in college!), it's measured from the level of the lowest lunar/astronomical tide. I reckon this is known as the low tide point maybe?

I think it's fairly scientific how it's calculated though, google might be able to throw up some more detailed answer!

from_atozinc

Manzoor14 wrote: »

By no means a tide expert here, but from what I remember (and this could be completely wrong, been years since I done Geography in college!), it's measured from the level of the lowest lunar/astronomical tide. I reckon this is known as the low tide point maybe?

I think it's fairly scientific how it's calculated though, google might be able to throw up some more detailed answer!

Thanks, would this lowest lunar/astronomical tide normally be 50 metres off shore or 500 metres off shore ?

Manzoor14

Again, i'm not entirely sure how shore is defined. I've always thought of it as, for example, where the wet sand meets the dry sand.

So it'd depend from area to area. Seapoint in Dublin might have 200m+ difference between high tide and low tide whereas some areas of Lackan Strand in Mayo might only have 5-6m. It'd probably depend much on water depth and other variables like wind, exposure etc.

I wouldn't take any of the above as gospel though, i'm going purely from (dodgy!) memory here!