Alexandria tide times

Alexandria spreads along the eastern Mediterranean coast of Egypt where the Nile delta gives way to a long limestone shelf that runs west toward Marsa Matruh and the Libyan border. The city's geography is set by two harbours and the curved Corniche between them. The Eastern Harbour, the natural curve of water in front of the city centre, holds the small fishing fleet at Anfoushi and the Citadel of Qaitbay on the old Pharos peninsula at the harbour mouth — the fortress built in the 1480s on the foundation of the ancient lighthouse, one of the Seven Wonders of the ancient world.

The Western Harbour, larger and protected by long breakwaters, handles the commercial port traffic that has been Alexandria's economic engine for two thousand years. Between them, the Corniche sweeps east past Stanley Bridge, the arched promenade structure over Stanley Beach, and continues toward Sidi Gaber, Glymenopoulo, and the Montaza palace gardens. East of Montaza the coast turns into the long sandy stretch toward Abu Qir Bay, where the Nile delta begins and where the Battle of the Nile in 1798 played out across the bay's outer roadstead.

West of the Citadel of Qaitbay, the Corniche bends past the Anfoushi fishing-boat harbour and the smaller swimming bays at El Mandara before the coast straightens and runs west past Agami toward the limestone-shelf beaches at Sidi Krir and Marina El Alamein. This is microtidal Mediterranean coast. The astronomical tide range at Alexandria is roughly 25 to 30 cm in mean conditions; even the largest spring tides rarely push beyond 35 cm.

The Mediterranean is nearly enclosed — the Strait of Gibraltar at its western end is too narrow to transmit much of the Atlantic tidal energy, and by the time the residual signal reaches the eastern basin off Egypt the astronomical tide is essentially negligible. What moves the water along the Corniche, into the Eastern Harbour, against Stanley Bridge, and over the limestone reef shelves at Glymenopoulo is wind and atmospheric pressure. A winter storm crossing the Mediterranean — the Cyprus and Levantine lows that develop between October and March — can push surge along the Alexandria coast 30 to 50 cm above the predicted level, several times the entire predicted tide range, and in the opposite direction in the wake of the same system.

That distinction is operationally important: for the small-boat fishing fleet at Anfoushi, the harbour-front swimming culture at Stanley Beach and Mandara, the long-line fishermen working the limestone reef west of Agami, and the port-pilotage operations at the Western Harbour, the weather forecast and the synoptic pressure pattern matter much more than the predicted tide. The Egyptian Hydrographic Department operates the gauge network along the Egyptian Mediterranean coast and publishes the authoritative sea-level and surge data — the source of record for any operation that depends on precise water level. The longshore current along the Alexandria coast runs predominantly west to east, driven by the Levantine basin circulation and modulated by the prevailing wind, and that current keeps the long beaches at Glymenopoulo and Mandara in their familiar shape year on year despite the absence of a meaningful tidal flush.

Predictions on this page come from Open-Meteo Marine, a gridded global ocean model. The model estimates tidal height across a geographic grid rather than from harmonic analysis at a calibrated gauge. 3 metres on height.

On a microtidal coast with mean range under 30 cm, that height uncertainty equals or exceeds the entire predicted astronomical signal. Use the model rhythm to know when high water and low water roughly fall, and weight the Egyptian Hydrographic Department real-time gauge and surge forecasts heavily for any actual planning that turns on precise water level.