Thuwal, Makkah Region tide times

Thuwal sits on the Red Sea coast 80 km north of Jeddah, inside the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology campus. The KAUST campus wraps around a sheltered cove where the Red Sea Research Center runs one of the world's most active coral research programmes. Access to the coast here is controlled — you need campus affiliation or research approval — which makes the reef system offshore unusually intact for a site so close to a large metropolitan region.

The Red Sea is not a high-tidal sea. At Thuwal the tidal regime is mixed semidiurnal: two unequal highs and two unequal lows per day, with a mean range between 0.4 m and 0.7 m. That compressed range is a direct consequence of where Thuwal falls along the Red Sea's length. The sea resonates like a tilted basin: the tidal node sits in the central section, roughly between 18°N and 22°N, where the astronomical signal nearly cancels itself out. Thuwal, at 22.3°N, is at the northern edge of that tidal minimum. The practical result is that the difference between high and low water on a typical day is less than half a metre. Anglers fishing the reef edges, paddlers crossing to nearby shoals, and dive boat operators all operate in a tidal environment where the question is less "when is high water" and more "which direction is the current running and how strongly."

The current matters more than the height. During the flood phase, water moves northward along the coast; during the ebb it reverses. Reef channels concentrate these movements. At the Al-Fahal reef, 5 km offshore from the KAUST campus, the channel currents during spring tides can reach 0.5–0.8 knots — enough to affect snorkel routes and make certain entry points more efficient than others. Al-Fahal is a marine protected area, and the reef contains over 300 documented coral species, with the Red Sea Research Center maintaining one of the longest continuous coral bleaching records for any reef system in the Indo-Pacific. The thermal and tidal observations from this reef have fed directly into global climate models.

For researchers and affiliated visitors, the Red Sea coast at Thuwal presents a working environment as much as a recreational one. The intertidal zone here is narrow because the tidal range is narrow — exposed reef flat during low water is shallow, extending perhaps 30–50 m before dropping to reef slope. Intertidal surveys can be timed to the daily low, which in summer typically falls in the morning and again in the late afternoon. The cooler morning low is the practical choice for any fieldwork requiring time on exposed reef.

Beach families using the campus beach area should note that the Red Sea's gentle tidal regime creates consistent swimming conditions. There are no dramatic tidal rip currents here, and the reef acts as a wave break, keeping the inshore water calm. The wind regime — onshore sea breeze most afternoons, offshore by early morning — matters more than tidal state for inshore surface conditions. Photographers working the sunrise over the Red Sea from the KAUST coast catch the low-angle light over the water with the Hejaz mountains visible to the east at certain angles after dawn; the calm pre-breeze morning coincides with the best optical conditions.

KAUST's Red Sea Research Center maintains weather and oceanographic monitoring stations, so real-time surface conditions are tracked more rigorously here than at most comparable Red Sea sites. Open-Meteo's model data for this position draws on a well-observed stretch of coast. The semi-enclosed nature of the Red Sea limits swell from distant storms; the surface conditions at Thuwal are locally generated, which makes forecast timing more reliable than at Atlantic or open-ocean sites.

For dive planning at Al-Fahal: the short crossing from the KAUST marina takes 15–20 minutes by research vessel or dive tender. The reef wall drops steeply from the surface. Visibility regularly exceeds 20 m in the winter months; summer brings warmer water and reduced visibility from plankton blooms. Tidal current planning is straightforward at this range — incoming and outgoing phases are each roughly six hours, and current direction is more useful information than water height for timing a reef dive.

Tide data for Thuwal, Makkah Region comes from the Open-Meteo Marine API, a gridded model product. Timing accuracy is ±45 minutes, height accuracy ±0.3 m — usable for trip planning, not for navigation.