Aberdeen, Scotland 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/London local. Folk tradition, not a scientific forecast.

Next spring tide on Sun 17 May (range 3.9m / 12.8ft). Last neap on Sat 16 May. Next neap on Fri 22 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.

Aberdeen sits on the North Sea coast of north-east Scotland between the Dee and the Don river estuaries, the granite city built almost entirely from the locally quarried Rubislaw stone that gives the streets their distinctive silver-grey colour even on overcast days. The working harbour at the Dee estuary mouth is the largest port serving the North Sea offshore oil and gas industry and the headquarters of the European supply-base operations for the East Shetland Basin, the Forties, and the Brent fields. The tide here is the moderate North Sea semidiurnal signal that the open-coast geometry delivers cleanly: mean range at the Aberdeen harbour gauge is about 3.7 metres, climbing past 4.5 metres on the largest spring tides and dropping near 2.0 on neaps. Two highs and two lows of comparable size about twelve and a half hours apart. The amplitude is larger than Leith on the Firth of Forth (where the funnel geometry concentrates the signal further south on the same coast) but smaller than the macrotidal English Channel and Bristol Channel coasts on the southern UK. The Dee estuary mouth dries to bare sand and rock at the lowest spring lows, and the harbour-master schedules dredged-channel access around the tide for the larger offshore-supply vessels. The defining modern industry is the offshore energy economy. Aberdeen has been the European oil capital since the early 1970s when commercial extraction began in the central and northern North Sea, and the airport at Dyce handles more helicopter movements per year than almost any other in the world (largest single source: the offshore platform shift-change traffic). The city pivoted hard into offshore wind through the 2010s, with the Aberdeen Bay Wind Farm visible from the beach corridor (eleven 8.4-megawatt turbines installed in 2018 as the first deployment of MHI Vestas V164 prototypes). The defining cultural feature is the Aberdeen FC fan culture and the Pittodrie ground on the seafront just north of the harbour, with the team's 1983 European Cup Winners' Cup final victory over Real Madrid in Gothenburg one of the great Scottish football moments. The Footdee fishing village (locally Fittie) at the harbour mouth, the long sand corridor at Aberdeen Beach and Balmedie north of the Don estuary, the historic Old Aberdeen with King's College and St Machar's Cathedral, and the cliff-and-castle coast at Dunnottar an hour south all read the table for different windows. UK Hydrographic Office Admiralty TotalTide is the authoritative British tide product; Open-Meteo Marine drives the gridded predictions on this page.