Virginia Beach (CBBT), VA tide times

Predictions: NOAA CO-OPS station 8638863 — heights relative to MLLW.

Harmonic prediction from the official tide authority. Very high accuracy under normal conditions; storm surge may shift actual water level. Not for navigation.

Marine-conditions data not available for this station. Wind, swell and water temperature ride along with Open-Meteo Marine; gauge-only stations (e.g. UK EA Flood) publish water level only.

Predictions: NOAA CO-OPS station 8638863 — heights relative to MLLW. · 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/New York local. Folk tradition, not a scientific forecast.

Next spring tide on Sat 16 May (range 1.2m / 3.8ft). Last neap on Fri 15 May. Next neap on Sat 23 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.

The Chesapeake Bay Bridge Tunnel gauge sits where the open Atlantic meets the mouth of Chesapeake Bay between Cape Charles to the north and Cape Henry on the Virginia Beach side to the south. It is one of the most-watched gauges on the US Mid-Atlantic — the brackish estuary that drains the entire Chesapeake watershed empties through this 28 km wide opening, and the tide cycle here drives both the Bay's flushing and the surf and shipping conditions across the Hampton Roads. Mean range at the CBBT is about 0.9 metres, semidiurnal, with two highs and two lows of comparable size each day, twelve and a half hours apart. Spring tides push close to 1.1 metres at the new and full moons; neaps drop near 0.7. Inside the Bay the range compresses further as the basin widens toward Annapolis and the Potomac. Surfers along the long sand at Sandbridge and First Landing read the table for low-tide bar reshaping. Surf-fishers at Lynnhaven Inlet and Rudee Inlet time their casts to the change. Walkers on the long beach in front of the resort high-rises at Virginia Beach see roughly 30 metres of horizontal beach width difference between high and low water on a spring tide. Nor'easter surge in autumn and winter and tropical-storm surge in late summer can both stack water levels well above predicted; the harmonic predictions on this page assume normal weather. NOAA CO-OPS station 8638863 is the authoritative gauge.