Tavira, Algarve 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 05:00 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 Europe/Lisbon local. Folk tradition, not a scientific forecast.

Next spring tide on Sun 17 May (range 3.1m). 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.

Tavira sits on the eastern Algarve, on the inner side of the Ria Formosa lagoon system that runs along the central southern coast of Portugal. The town is separated from the open Atlantic by a barrier island, Ilha de Tavira, with a narrow inlet — Barra de Tavira — at one end and a wider one further west at Barra de Cabanas. The tide signature is cleanly semidiurnal, two highs and two lows of comparable size, twelve and a half hours apart. Mean range at the inlets is about 2.0 metres, climbing past 3 metres on spring tides and dropping near 1.0 on neaps. The narrow inlets concentrate the flow and the current at each runs sharper than the height swing implies. The lagoon itself transforms across the cycle: salt pans and tidal flats around Tavira drain on the ebb and the channels behind the barrier island become a maze of tidal creeks. The flamingo flocks that overwinter on the Ria Formosa work these flats at the lower half of every cycle. Photographers on the Praça da República walk over to the Ilha de Tavira beach by ferry across the inlet — the ferry runs to a tide-aware schedule, slack water being the smoothest crossing. Predictions on this page come from Open-Meteo's gridded marine model. Instituto Hidrográfico is the authoritative Portuguese tide source.