Saint-Denis tide times

Saint-Denis is the prefecture of Réunion and its largest city, a tropical urban centre of 150,000 people on the northern coast of the island where the basalt lava flows of the Plaine des Galets reach the sea and the Indian Ocean arrives without a coral reef barrier. The north coast of Réunion has no fringing reef — unlike the west coast, where the reef lagoon creates a calm turquoise environment — and the seafront at Saint-Denis is a constructed promenade on a rocky shoreline rather than a sandy beach. The Barachois is the city's seafront promenade: a palm-lined sea wall walk along the rocky shoreline, with a recreational area on the landward side and the Indian Ocean on the seaward side, the water often rough in the northeast trade swell that characterises the north coast.

Creole architecture in the city centre — the single-storey wooden houses with decorative ironwork verandas and louvred shutters adapted to the tropical climate — is the most visible cultural heritage. The Villa de la Légion on the Rue de Paris and the Musée Léon Dierx, one of the oldest art museums in the southern hemisphere (1911), are the standard heritage stops. The Cathedral Saint-Denis on the Rue de Paris dates from 1829. The Avenue de la Victoire, lined with flame trees (flamboyants), is the main commercial and promenade axis of the centre.

Roland Garros Airport, named after the aviator born in Saint-Denis in 1888, sits on the coastal flat 7 km east of the city centre — the runway approach is over the sea, and the beach immediately below the approach path at La Rivière-des-Galets attracts spectator visits. The airport lies between two lava deltas where river systems built the coastal plain; the land here is geologically young and still being extended by occasional lava flows from Piton de la Fournaise.

The Indian Ocean tidal regime at Saint-Denis is mixed semidiurnal: mean spring range 0.8 to 1.2 m, with two unequal highs and two unequal lows per day. The absence of a reef means the north coast is exposed to Indian Ocean swell — this is not the calm lagoon environment of Le Port or Saint-Gilles-les-Bains on the west coast. Low water on the north coast exposes volcanic rock platforms that are accessible for rock-pooling and shore fishing; the platform fauna includes sea urchins, octopus, and small reef fish in the lava pools. Shore anglers fish the Barachois rocks and the river-mouth platforms at Saint-Denis for carangue (jacks), bichique (glassfisch fry), and mullet.

Cyclone season (November to April) affects the north coast most directly when cyclone tracks approach from the northeast; the Barachois promenade is closed during storm warnings and wave overtopping can affect the sea wall. Outside cyclone season, the north coast is dry and sunny in the morning, with cloud building over the inland peaks in the afternoon — the classic Réunion coastal climate pattern.

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 m on height — at Saint-Denis's 0.8 to 1.2 m spring range, the height uncertainty is roughly 20 to 30 percent of the total signal. For authoritative Réunion sea-level data, SHOM (Service Hydrographique et Océanographique de la Marine) publishes harmonic tide tables for Réunion; the Saint-Denis gauge is a SHOM reference station.