La Floresta, Uruguay tide times

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.

Conditions as of 19:00 local time. Refreshes daily.

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

The angler tradition for major/minor fishing windows: major ≈3-hour windows around moon transit and opposition; minor ≈2-hour windows around moonrise and moonset. Times are America/Montevideo local. Folk tradition, not a scientific forecast.

Next spring tide on Wed 20 May (range 1.0m). Last neap on Tue 19 May.

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.

La Floresta is a beach town on the Canelones coast of Uruguay, 60 km east of Montevideo on Route 11, sitting between Atlántida and Solis on the Río de la Plata estuary-facing shore. The town is low-rise and pine-shaded — the streets are unpaved behind the principal beach road, the houses are summer chalets behind hedgerows, and the off-season empties the place down to a core of permanent residents. The beach runs 1.5 km of grey-brown sand, wide at low water, with the dunes holding the pines back from the high-tide line. The coastal regime here is the Río de la Plata southern shore: wind-dominated water levels rather than classical ocean tides. Open-Meteo Marine provides forecast data — timing accuracy ±45 minutes, height accuracy ±0.2–0.3 m for the modelled tidal signal. The dominant water-level driver is wind: sudestadas (SE winds) pile water against the Uruguayan shore, raising levels 0.5–2 m; NW wind reversals drain it. The astronomical tidal range is 0.3–0.6 m on this section of the estuary coast. For beach families, La Floresta is the classic Uruguayan summer resort experience in its quieter form. The water temperature peaks at 20–22°C in January–February. The beach is wide, the waves are mild (fetch-limited by the estuary geometry), and the pines behind the dunes give shade from the afternoon sun and shelter from the wind. The main beach has lifeguards in season (December–March). Facilities include a handful of restaurants, a small supermarket, and the public beach infrastructure. Surfers and body-boarders find that La Floresta's estuary-facing exposure limits wave quality — the best waves arrive on NE to E winds during cold fronts that generate short-period chop rather than groundswell. This is paddleboarding and casual boogie board territory rather than serious wave-riding ground. Playa de los Ingleses, 3 km east, occasionally gets better wave conditions when SE swell wraps around the Punta del Este headland further east. Anglers working the beach and the rocky points at either end of the bay target corvina (croaker), pejerrey, and cazón (school shark) from the shore. The incoming tide window — the two hours before high water — consistently produces the most fish from the beach. Simple paternoster rigs with cut bait (mullet, shrimp) at 40–60 m casting range are the local standard. Photographers get the classic winter Canelones coast image here — grey sky, grey-brown beach, grey-green pines, and a surfer silhouette in the flat cold water — a monochrome palette that's very different from the tropical colour palette of the Caribbean places in this batch. The dramatic cold-front sky over the estuary, with the low Argentine coast barely visible on the horizon 40 km away, makes for strong landscape photography in winter.