Jeddah tide times

Jeddah sits on the Red Sea roughly halfway up the Saudi coast, positioned where the continental shelf is wide enough to support the King Abdulaziz Seaport — one of the largest ports in the Middle East — and the reef system is close enough to shore to have shaped the city's historic identity. The old district of Al-Balad, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, was built from coral rock cut from the reef: the distinctive mashrabiya screens on the historic houses and the coral-block walls of the old souqs and caravanserais record a time when the reef itself was the primary building material available on this stretch of coast. The Corniche runs north from the port along the seafront for roughly 30 kilometres, offering the most accessible Red Sea frontage in Jeddah.

The King Fahd Fountain, visible from most of the north Corniche, is a reference point for the offshore distance to the reef edge, which sits roughly 2 to 4 kilometres from the Corniche promenade at this latitude, with the shallow fringing shelf of coral, sand, and seagrass in between. The tidal regime at Jeddah is semidiurnal: two highs and two lows roughly 12 hours 25 minutes apart. 8 metres, with spring tides around new and full moons pushing toward the upper end and neap tides at the quarter moons compressing toward the lower.

The Red Sea's tidal signal is constrained by its basin geometry. The sea connects to the Indian Ocean only through the narrow Bab el-Mandeb Strait at its southern end, and the resonant length of the basin moderates the tidal amplitude along the central Saudi coast. The swing at Jeddah is enough to drain the inner reef flat at low water, exposing the reef table in places for wading and tidepool access, and to noticeably shift the snorkelling depth over the outer reef edge.

It is not enough to produce the dramatic intertidal exposure seen on open-ocean coasts. Diving and snorkelling access to the reef is primarily by boat from the Balad fishing harbour or from the private marina complexes on the north Corniche. The Abu Madafi reef system and the Qita al-Kirsh reef further south are the destinations for organised dive charters, typically half- or full-day trips.

The reefs directly offshore of central Jeddah have been degraded by sedimentation and runoff from port and coastal development, but the outer reefs accessed by boat remain some of the better-preserved coral systems on the Saudi coast. Shore fishing from the Corniche sea wall targets smaller reef species — snapper, grunt, and mullet around the structures — and the Sharm Obhur inlet north of central Jeddah, where a shallow tidal channel connects a large brackish lagoon to the Red Sea, is used by kayakers and small-boat anglers who work the channel current on the tidal exchange. Wind, particularly the shamal from the north in the June-to-September season, modulates water level along the Jeddah Corniche by tens of centimetres independent of the predicted tide.

A sustained northerly stacks water against the Saudi eastern-central coast and pushes the Corniche level above prediction; when the wind drops, the setup relaxes. Dust hazes during the shamal season reduce visibility at the reef substantially. The Saudi Coast Guard and the Saudi Ports Authority operate the sea-level gauge network and the vessel traffic management at King Abdulaziz Seaport.

Those are the authoritative sources for harbour pilotage, port scheduling, and any operation that depends on precise water level along the Jeddah coast. The predictions on this page come from Open-Meteo Marine, a gridded global ocean model. 3 metres on height.

On a coast with a mean range under a metre, the height uncertainty is a meaningful fraction of the total signal. Use the predicted rhythm for activity planning, and use the Saudi Ports Authority data for any decision that depends on precise level.