Tamil Nadu

Tamil Nadu fronts the western Bay of Bengal on India's south-eastern coast, from the Andhra Pradesh border at Pulicat Lake south through Chennai, the long sand-and-temple coast at Mahabalipuram, the working ports at Cuddalore and Thoothukudi, and the Palk Strait facing Sri Lanka at the Rameswaram tip. The tide here is a moderate mixed semidiurnal signal — two highs and two lows of unequal size most days, the asymmetry varying through the lunar month — with a smaller range than the Arabian Sea side at Mumbai. Mean range at the Chennai harbour gauge is about 1.0 metre, climbing past 1.5 metres on spring tides and dropping near 0.5 on neaps. Marina Beach in central Chennai is the second-longest urban beach in the world after Cox's Bazar across the bay in Bangladesh, and the wide sand from Triplicane south to Foreshore Estate widens by tens of metres at low water. The defining hazard is the cyclone season — the post-monsoon period from October through December produces several Bay of Bengal cyclones each year, and storm surge during landfall can stack two to four metres above predicted; the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami killed thousands along this coastline as a separate non-tidal event. Mahabalipuram's Pancha Rathas and the Shore Temple sit on the immediate beachfront, and the lowest spring lows briefly expose submerged sculpture remnants offshore that locals identify with the lost city of the Seven Pagodas. Marina fishing fleets at Royapuram, the Thoothukudi pearl banks, and the Pamban island fishing villages each read the table for different windows. The Survey of India and INCOIS publish the authoritative tide tables; Open-Meteo Marine drives the gridded predictions on this site.