Lima (Callao) 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 23:00 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/Lima local. Folk tradition, not a scientific forecast.

Next spring tide on Sat 16 May (range 1.1m). Next neap on Wed 20 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.

Lima fronts the Pacific on Peru's central coast where the Andes drop almost directly to the ocean, with the working port of Callao on the broad bay just north of the river mouth and the long Costa Verde cliff line running south through Miraflores, Barranco, and Chorrillos toward the surf coast at Punta Hermosa and Punta Negra. The city sits inside one of the driest coastal deserts on Earth — Lima averages under 10 millimetres of rainfall a year — but the garúa coastal fog that rolls in off the cold Humboldt Current keeps the air damp and grey for half the year. The tide here is a small mixed semidiurnal signal characteristic of open Pacific coasts at this latitude: mean range at the Callao gauge is about 0.7 metres, climbing past 1.0 metre on the largest spring tides and dropping near 0.4 on neaps. The pattern is two highs and two lows of unequal size each day, with the difference between the higher high and the lower low varying through the lunar month. The defining oceanographic feature is not the tide range but the cold Humboldt Current that sweeps north along the coast from the Antarctic — sea-surface temperatures stay between 14 and 19 degrees year-round at this latitude despite Lima sitting at twelve degrees south, and the cold-water upwelling that the current drives feeds the largest single-species fishery on Earth: the anchoveta industrial fleet that supplies the bulk of global fish meal and fish oil. The El Niño cycle that periodically warms the surface and collapses the anchoveta catch shapes the working calendar of the entire Peruvian fishing industry. The garúa fog season from May through November flattens the surf and turns the entire coast grey; the December-through-April clear season opens up the long Pacific swell that the south-coast breaks at Punta Hermosa, Cerro Azul, and the long left at Chicama further north all rise to. The ceviche houses at the Villa María del Triunfo wholesale market read the boat-return calendar more than the tide table; the surfers at Makaha and La Pampilla read the swell more than the height swing. The Costa Verde cliff path along the Miraflores escarpment, the surf at Waikiki Lima, and the working fishing pier at Chorrillos all read the table for different windows. Open-Meteo Marine drives the gridded predictions on this page; for authoritative Peruvian tide data, the Dirección de Hidrografía y Navegación (DHN) of the Peruvian Navy publishes the official tide tables.