Every Year of Tides poster holds one harbor's tides for a whole year: every high and low water from NOAA's predictions for that station. Each station comes in two designs. They carry the same information, laid out two ways.
Currents: each day a clock
Each month is a column, with one small dial per day running down the page. The hands point to the hours of high water the way a clock's would. The thick hand is the morning high, the thin one the afternoon or evening high, and a longer hand means higher water.
Beside each dial are that day's tide times: bold for the highs and light for the lows. Because the tide arrives about fifty minutes later each day, the hands turn steadily from one day to the next, and you can watch the month's rhythm in the way they sweep around.
The twelve highest tides of the year are picked out in the palette's accent color.
Waves: the year as a pattern
Each row is one day, from midnight on the left to midnight on the right. Every stretch of hours when the water stands above half tide is drawn as a stroke, with its time and height printed on it.
Because the tide comes later each day, the strokes braid into diagonals, and one sweep across the page is one lunar month. The color deepens with the height of the water, so the spring tides after each new and full moon run darkest. The twelve highest tides are picked out in the accent color, low tides are small open dots, and weekends are tinted so you can find a Saturday at a glance.
On both designs
- Tide predictions are NOAA's for the named station, in local time, adjusted for daylight saving.
- Heights are in feet above mean lower low water, the zero NOAA uses on its charts, so a minus tide is a lower-than-usual low.
- The moon's phases run down the margin.
- The year's highest and lowest tides and its average range are printed in the corner.
The posters are for planning the year: the good beach days, the low tides for the flats, the king tides worth seeing. They are not for navigation.
Which one should I pick?
Currents rewards a close look: it's the one to hang where you'll stand and read tomorrow's times. Waves reads from across the room as a pattern of the whole year. Every station comes in both, in five palettes.