Vlorë tide times

Predictions: Open-Meteo Marine (MeteoFrance SMOC, 0.08° grid) — heights relative to MSL (not chart datum / LAT). Model-derived.

Model-derived from a global ocean grid. Useful indication; expect about ±45 minutes on average vs. a local harmonic gauge, individual stations vary widely. See /methodology for per-region detail. Not for navigation.

Conditions as of 06:00 local time. Refreshes daily.

Predictions: Open-Meteo Marine (MeteoFrance SMOC, 0.08° grid) — heights relative to MSL (not chart datum / LAT). Model-derived. · Not for navigation.

The angler tradition for major/minor fishing windows: major ≈3-hour windows around moon transit and opposition; minor ≈2-hour windows around moonrise and moonset. Times are Europe/Tirane local. Folk tradition, not a scientific forecast.

Vlorë sits at the innermost point of Vlora Bay, the wide indentation in the central Albanian coast where the Adriatic basin transitions to the Ionian Sea. The bay is broad — roughly 30 kilometres across the entrance from the Karaburun Peninsula to the coast at Orikum — and Vlorë town occupies the flat coastal plain at its head, backed by the Ceraunian Mountains rising steeply inland. The city has the character of a working southern Albanian port town rather than a polished resort: the fish market at the harbour, the evening promenade along the Lungomare, the cafes facing the bay, and the commercial traffic through the port that includes roll-on roll-off ferries to Italy. The beach coast runs south from the city toward Radhima, a long sandy and pebbly arc that holds the concentration of summer beach bars and resort accommodation. Zvërnec Island, reached by a narrow wooden causeway from the mainland shore, sits in the shallow lagoon a few kilometres north of Vlorë and holds the monastery of Our Lady of Zvërnec, a small 14th-century structure that has been rebuilt and restored over the centuries. The lagoon around the island is a wading-bird habitat — herons, egrets, and the flamingos that use the Narta Lagoon system to the north — and the shallow water over the mudflat exposes and floods with the tidal cycle in a way that is more visible here than anywhere else on the open beach coast. The tidal signal at Vlorë is semidiurnal and the most substantial on the Albanian coast — mean range roughly 0.3 to 0.5 metres, driven by the Adriatic basin resonance. The Adriatic is a semi-enclosed sea with its own natural period of oscillation that amplifies the astronomical tide at its northern end, but the signal is still present and semidiurnal at Vlorë in the south, with spring tides at new and full moons pushing toward the upper end of the range and neap tides at the quarter moons compressing toward 0.2 metres. For the open beach at Radhima, a 0.3 to 0.5 metre range on a gently shelving sandy coast means the tide line migrates visibly — 10 to 20 metres of beach width between the highest high and the lowest low on a spring tide cycle. At the lowest spring lows in summer, the inner sandbar and rocky patches that are normally a foot or two underwater are occasionally exposed, and the standing-entry depth for swimmers from the shore changes noticeably. Fishermen on the Radhima coast and from the small boats working out of the Vlorë port time the incoming tide for targeting mullet and seabream in the shallows along the sandy southern beach arc. The Vjosë river mouth, some 15 kilometres north of Vlorë at the Narta Lagoon complex, introduces a freshwater pulse that is seasonal rather than tidal — the spring snowmelt from the mountains of eastern Albania and North Macedonia runs down the Vjosë, which is among the last major undammed rivers in Europe, and the flood discharge in March and April can push turbid freshwater kilometres offshore. The estuary zone at Narta is a productive grey mullet and eel fishery year-round, worked by net and by line from the lagoon banks. The Karaburun Peninsula to the west, the arm of limestone highland that encloses Vlora Bay from the west, is a protected nature reserve — no permanent habitation, vehicle access limited to a forestry track from the Orikum isthmus, and the west coast facing the open Ionian. The submarine cave of Haxhi Ali on the Karaburun Ionian face, reachable only by boat from Orikum or Vlorë, is one of the most visited dive and freedive sites on the Albanian coast. The cave entrance sits at around 10 metres below the surface and opens into a larger chamber; the water clarity on the Ionian face of Karaburun is substantially better than inside the bay, driven by the open-sea flushing rather than the relatively sheltered bay circulation. Kayakers crossing from Orikum to the Karaburun west coast need to clear the peninsula tip against potential afternoon wind from the northwest, which accelerates around the headland from the open Adriatic into the bay entrance. The predictions on this page come from Open-Meteo Marine, a gridded global ocean model. Accuracy is typically within plus or minus 45 minutes on timing and 0.2 to 0.3 metres on height — model-derived, not a local gauge. At Vlorë, with a mean range of 0.3 to 0.5 metres, the model's timing uncertainty matters more than the height uncertainty for most practical planning.