Tel Aviv-Yafo tide times

Tel Aviv-Yafo wraps the central Israeli Mediterranean coast at the foot of the coastal plain that runs from the Lebanese border in the north south to the Gaza line. The modern city was founded in 1909 on the sand dunes immediately north of the ancient port of Jaffa (Yafo), and the two amalgamated under the joint name in 1950. Tel Aviv beach runs continuously for about fourteen kilometres from the Reading Beach at the Yarkon river mouth in the north south past Hilton, Gordon, Frishman, and Bograshov to the working port of Jaffa and the Bat Yam line beyond.

5 metres and neaps dropping near flat. The astronomical signal is genuinely tiny because the Mediterranean connects to the Atlantic only through the narrow Strait of Gibraltar and the Eastern Mediterranean is the far end of an already weak tidal system. What matters more on a day-to-day basis is meteorological tide.

Westerly storms in winter can lift water levels 30 to 50 centimetres above predicted on sustained events and build the surf at Hilton Beach, the Bograshov breaks, and the Maravi point break further south. The defining cultural and historical feature is the Jaffa fishing port, one of the oldest continuously operating ports in the world. Phoenician traders worked the harbour three thousand years ago, the cedar of Lebanon used in the construction of the First and Second Temples passed through Jaffa according to the biblical Books of Chronicles and Ezra, the prophet Jonah departed for Tarshish from Jaffa in the Book of Jonah, and the Saint Peter Church above the working port marks the early-Christian pilgrimage tradition that traces to the Acts of the Apostles.

The harbour itself is small by modern standards but the working fishing fleet still ties up at the Jaffa harbour each morning and the catch is auctioned at the dockside. The long Tel Aviv beach corridor narrows by a few metres at high water and widens at low; the Tayelet boardwalk runs continuously from the Tel Aviv port at the northern edge to Jaffa. Sailing fleets out of the Tel Aviv marina, the working ferry industry along the coast, the night-fishing scene at Reading Beach, and the surf calendar at Hilton, Bograshov, and Maravi all read the wider weather pattern more than the tide table.

The Israel Oceanographic and Limnological Research institute (IOLR) publishes the authoritative water-level data; Open-Meteo Marine drives the gridded predictions on this page.