Predictions: NOAA CO-OPS station 8726520 — heights relative to MLLW.

Harmonic prediction from the official tide authority. Very high accuracy under normal conditions; storm surge may shift actual water level. Not for navigation.

Predictions: NOAA CO-OPS station 8726520 — heights relative to MLLW. · Not for navigation.

The angler tradition that rates each day for fish-bite likelihood using moon transits and rise/set. One to five stars, not a scientific forecast.

• Mon
  ★★★★★
• Tue
  ★★★★★
• Wed
  ★★★★★
• Thu
  ★★★★★
• Fri
  ★★★★★
• Sat
  ★★★★★
• Sun
  ★★★★★

Next spring tide on Sun 03 May (range 0.8m / 2.8ft). Next neap on Tue 28 Apr.

Spring tides cluster around new and full moons (biggest swings). Neap tides land on quarter moons (smallest swings). See the spring tide and neap tide glossary entries for the why.

Tampa Bay is the largest open-water estuary on the Florida Gulf coast, with the working ports of Tampa, St Petersburg, and Port Manatee inside, the Sunshine Skyway bridge crossing its mouth, and Egmont Key guarding the bay entrance to the Gulf. The NOAA reference gauge sits at St Petersburg on the south side of the city, measuring the inner-bay signal that the cross-bay tunnel approach and the Bayway crossings all run on. The tide signature here is small and mixed — mean range at the St Petersburg gauge is about 0.6 metres, climbing past 1.0 metre on the largest spring tides and dropping near flat on neaps. The pattern shifts between mixed semidiurnal and diurnal across the lunar month: most days produce two highs and two lows of unequal size, but at certain points in the cycle one of the two excursions effectively disappears and the day reads as a single high-low. The astronomical forcing is small because the Gulf basin is broad and partially enclosed; what often dominates day-to-day water levels is wind and pressure rather than the moon. The bay's geometry concentrates flow through the narrow mouth at the Skyway, with currents on the change of tide running sharper than the height swing implies. Hurricane season runs June through November and tropical-storm surge can lift water levels two metres or more above predicted — Hurricane Idalia (2023) drove a 1.5-metre surge at the gauge, and the long-feared major-hurricane direct hit on Tampa Bay would push the figure substantially higher. Inshore fishers working the snook flats at Fort De Soto, kayakers crossing to Egmont Key, and the daily Bay Pines ferry skippers each read the table for different windows. Lowest spring lows around new and full moons widen the inner-bay flats at Boca Ciega and the seagrass beds at Picnic Island for hours either side. NOAA CO-OPS station 8726520 supplies the harmonic predictions on this page; the National Hurricane Center is the authoritative real-time source during tropical landfall events.