Tide times are inaccurate
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I live on my boat and when I travel Tides are a very handy feature. Lately I’ve noticed that the times for high and low tide are off. I’m currently in Key Largo Florida USA and when comparing to other tide sources Windy tides appear to approximately two hours off. Is this some setting I don’t know about? Key Largo is currently on eastern daylight savings time (-4:00 GMT). Thanks for your help. GREAT program!
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Here are the tide times for Ocean Reef Harbor according to NOAA.
And in Windy, the difference is only a few minutes.
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First thanks for the response. In what you sent me it looks like your tides in Windy match up with what NOAA shows. However, that is not the case for me. See two attached slides. This is from today, April 2, 2025. First slide is NOAA for Key Largo Florida. Second slide is from my Windy app. The times are not even close. Any ideas? Is something set wrong on my app? Any help is appreciated. They seem to be roughly 2 hours-ish apart. CURT
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The problem is may be due to a location difference.
The NOAA tide is given for Ocean Reef Harbor. This harbor is further north (19mi) than Key Largo, near Grayvik, if I'm not mistaken.
Could you zoom in like I did and place the pointer near this harbor?
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This is a very good point that you are making…. So I looked up Ocean Reef on my navigational chart and you are correct. The times match up between Windy and Navionics. My next question is (as you say) I’m 19 miles from there. There is a tide station called Rock Harbor Key Largo. Is there any way I can force Windy to use the nearest tide station? Thank you very much for your help on this. CURT
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@ad4tise said in Tide times are inaccurate:
Is there any way I can force Windy to use the nearest tide station?
Windy tide predictions use WorldTides data. This program doesn't focus on tide stations themselves, as it provides tide data everywhere.
Therefore, at your usual location, the tide displayed in Windy should be correct.
How can we check this? Using the Rock Harbor station in Key Largo is impossible for two reasons:- It appears that no data is available.
- The station is located in a bay, and the WorldTides program is not accurate there.
Since there is no tide station on the ocean side of Key Largo, the solution is to compare two tide stations located on either side of Key Largo. We used a station to the north, therefore, we need to find another station further south. If Windy also displays correct data there, we can assume that Windy is correct in Key Largo being between these stations on a straight shoreline.
I leave you choose the second tide station and make the comparison. -
OK, this explains a lot. I do appreciate your time on this. Have a fabulous day. Great program by the way….
