Valparaíso 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 00:00 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/Santiago local. Folk tradition, not a scientific forecast.

Next spring tide on Sun 17 May (range 1.6m). Last neap on Fri 15 May. Next neap on Thu 21 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.

Valparaíso sits on the central Chilean Pacific coast at about 33 degrees south, the country's principal working port and the historic Pacific gateway between Cape Horn and the Panama Canal opening of 1914. The city wraps the long curve of the Bahía de Valparaíso between Punta Ángeles in the west and Punta Concón in the east, with Viña del Mar across the headland to the north and the Aconcagua river mouth feeding into the open Pacific further north still. The tide here is a small mixed semidiurnal signal characteristic of open Pacific coasts at this latitude: mean range at the Valparaíso harbour gauge is about 1.1 metres, climbing past 1.5 metres on the largest spring tides and dropping near 0.6 on neaps. Two highs and two lows of unequal size each day, with the asymmetry between the higher high and the lower low varying through the lunar month. The defining oceanographic feature is the cold Humboldt Current that sweeps north along the Chilean coast from the Antarctic Circumpolar Current — sea-surface temperatures stay between 12 and 18 degrees year-round despite the mid-latitude position and the cold-water upwelling drives the Chilean industrial fishing economy. The defining historical events are the tsunami impacts. The 11 November 1922 Vallenar earthquake (Mw 8.5, north-central Chile) generated a Pacific-wide tsunami that struck Valparaíso harbour with run-up exceeding 9 metres in places and reshaped the early-twentieth-century waterfront engineering, with the city eventually building the seawall promenades and the dredged container channel that the modern working port uses. The 22 May 1960 Valdivia earthquake (Mw 9.5, southern Chile, the largest earthquake ever recorded by instrumentation) generated the trans-Pacific tsunami that killed people in Hawaii, Japan, and the Philippines and was felt at Valparaíso about 11 hours after the rupture as a series of 1 to 2 metre water-level oscillations through the harbour over several hours. The cerros (hill quarters) of Valparaíso climb the 45-degree slopes immediately above the working harbour — Cerro Concepción, Cerro Alegre, Cerro Bellavista, Cerro Artillería — and the funicular ascensor system has connected port-level workers to the residential cerros since 1883, with about 15 of the original 30 ascensores still operating. UNESCO inscribed the historic quarter on the World Heritage list in 2003 for the urbanism and the cerro-and-port industrial heritage. The working container terminal at the Puerto de Valparaíso, the cruise calls, the Vergara Pier at Viña del Mar, the long sand at Reñaca and Concón, and the surf at Punta de Lobos and Pichilemu about 200 kilometres south on the open Pacific coast all read the table for different windows. The Chilean Navy Hydrographic and Oceanographic Service (SHOA) publishes the authoritative Chilean tide tables and operates the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center liaison station; Open-Meteo Marine drives the gridded predictions on this page.