Tide times for New Orleans, LA

Tide curve — next 24 hours

Predictions: Open-Meteo Marine (MeteoFrance SMOC, 0.08° grid) — heights relative to MSL (not chart datum / LAT). Model-derived.

Model-derived from a global ocean grid. Useful indication; expect about ±45 minutes on average vs. a local harmonic gauge, individual stations vary widely. See /methodology for per-region detail. Not for navigation.

Best windows Sun 26 Apr

Suggested time slots at New Orleans, LA, derived from the tide, sun, moon, and conditions data on this page. Rough guidance, not a forecast.

• Fishing
  Around 03:30, solunar major near sunrise
  Moon transit nearest the sun's horizon — angler tradition only, no certainty
  Confidence: medium
  7-day fishing strip →

About tides at New Orleans, LA

New Orleans sits on the Mississippi River delta about 160 kilometres upstream from the river's mouth at the Gulf of Mexico, the working port that handles the bulk of the inland-American grain and petrochemical exports through the Mississippi River navigation channel. The city is below sea level for most of its developed footprint — the levees on the east bank of the river run to about 5 metres above sea level at the Vieux Carré, and the back-of-town flat between the river and Lake Pontchartrain on the north sits 2 to 3 metres below sea level. The tide here is the Gulf of Mexico diurnal signal modulated heavily by river discharge and meteorological forcing. Mean range at the river-mouth Pilots Station East gauge is about 0.4 metres at the Head of Passes; at the New Orleans waterfront the river-stage variation from upstream snowmelt-and-rainfall flow dominates anything astronomical, with a typical seasonal range of 4 to 5 metres at the Carrollton gauge from low water in autumn to the spring crest in March or April. Most days produce one clear high and one clear low rather than the two-and-two semidiurnal pattern; a smaller secondary excursion shows up at certain lunar phases but rarely matters for working planning. The defining historical event is Hurricane Katrina on 29 August 2005. The storm surge through the Mississippi River-Gulf Outlet (MRGO) navigation channel and the Lake Pontchartrain levee breaches flooded about 80% of the city, killed more than 1,800 people across the Gulf Coast, and drove the federal Greater New Orleans Hurricane and Storm Damage Risk Reduction System (HSDRRS) — the 230-kilometre, 14.5-billion-dollar levee and floodwall network that the US Army Corps of Engineers built between 2007 and 2018. The defining working feature is the dredging programme. The Mississippi River below New Orleans is dredged to a 15-metre channel depth at the Southwest Pass to allow Panamax and post-Panamax vessels through to the Port of New Orleans, the Port of South Louisiana, and Baton Rouge upstream. Working tugs, river pilots, the steamboats Natchez and City of New Orleans, the casino riverboats, and the long oyster fleet out of Plaquemines Parish below the city all read the river-stage forecast and the surge forecast more than the astronomical tide. NOAA CO-OPS runs the authoritative gauge network on the river and the Gulf approaches; the National Hurricane Center is the authoritative real-time source during tropical landfall events.

Common questions about tides at New Orleans, LA