La Habana

La Habana province wraps the Cuban capital and its coast on the northern side of the island, where the limestone shelf drops quickly into the Florida Straits and the deep water of the Gulf Stream runs eastward only a few kilometres offshore. The tidal regime here is mixed semidiurnal and microtidal: two unequal highs and two unequal lows each day, with mean astronomical range in Bahía de la Habana running roughly 25 to 40 cm. That is genuinely small, and it places the Cuban north coast in the same category as the inner Baltic — the predicted highs and lows describe a small water-level signal that wind, atmospheric pressure, and the meander of the Florida Current can easily exceed. A sustained northerly during a winter frente frío routinely pushes water along the Malecón seawall well above the predicted level; the spectacular wave overtopping that floods the Avenida del Puerto during these events is driven by swell and surge, not by the tide. The authoritative tidal reference for Cuban waters is the Instituto Cubano de Hidrografía (GEOCUBA), which publishes harmonic predictions and operates the gauge network for the principal Cuban ports. NOAA's tide stations in the adjacent Florida Keys, particularly Key West and Vaca Key, provide a useful regional cross-reference for the Florida Straits regime — the tidal phase and amplitude on the Cuban north coast track the Keys gauges closely once the regional offset is applied. The coastline runs from Mariel in the west through the entrance to Bahía de la Habana, past the Malecón, around the Castillo del Morro headland, and east through the Playas del Este beaches at Santa María del Mar, Boca Ciega and Guanabo. Shore anglers, paddlers and beach-walkers along this coast plan around weather, swell and the regional cold-front cycle far more than around the small predicted tide. Open-Meteo Marine drives the gridded tide predictions on TideTurtle pages for this region.