Västra Götaland

Västra Götaland wraps Sweden's western coast on the Skagerrak and Kattegat between the Norwegian border at Strömstad and the Halland line south of Gothenburg. This is the only stretch of the Swedish coastline with a meaningful astronomical tide — the Baltic Sea east of the Öresund runs a near-flat regime where wind, pressure, and freshwater inflow dominate water-level variation. The Skagerrak coast here connects to the open North Sea and propagates a small semidiurnal signal: mean range at the Gothenburg port gauge is about 0.3 metres, climbing past 0.5 metres on the largest spring tides and dropping close to flat on neaps. The astronomical forcing is small because the Skagerrak is a wide shallow basin off the open ocean rather than a resonant funnel. What matters more on a day-to-day basis is the meteorological tide — sustained westerly gales push water against the Bohuslän archipelago and lift apparent water level 30 to 60 centimetres above predicted, and the same wind drains the Kattegat into the Baltic on the rebound. The Bohuslän archipelago of granite skerries running north from Gothenburg toward the Norwegian border is one of the great cruising grounds of northern Europe — Marstrand, Gullholmen, and the Koster Islands all read the wider weather pattern more than the tide table. Lobster fishing season opens late September each year and follows a strict calendar regardless of tide. The Saltholmen ferry to the southern archipelago, the working container terminal at the mouth of the Göta älv, and the cold-water swim culture at Kallbadhuset Saltholmen all read the table for different windows. SMHI publishes the authoritative Swedish water-level forecasts; Open-Meteo Marine drives the gridded predictions on this site.