California King Tides 2026–27

The table lists the highest high tide NOAA predicts at each of our beaches from November 9, 2026 to February 28, 2027, north to south. Each height is for that beach's own NOAA station, named in the last column with its distance from the beach.

All 14 beaches reach their highest predicted high tide of the season on Thursday, December 24, one day after the full moon of December 23. The highest of these peaks is 7.6 ft at San Diego and the lowest is 6.8 ft at Santa Cruz. Each peak is 1.3 to 1.8 ft above the average daily high tide at the same station over the four months. All of them come in daylight, between 8:14 AM and 10:37 AM.

"King tide" is not a scientific term. NOAA describes it as an everyday name for exceptionally high tides, and in California it means the highest predicted high tides of the year. Nothing special happens to the ocean on those days: they are ordinary tides at the top of their range, and because tides follow the moon and the sun, they can be predicted years ahead.

What are king tides like in numbers? This season, the highest predicted high tide at each of our beaches is 1.3 to 1.8 ft above the average daily high tide at the same station from November to February.

On this site, a beach's king tide numbers are the highest high tides NOAA predicts there from November to February. Heights are in feet above mean lower low water (MLLW), the average of each day's lower low tide.

In late fall and winter. This season's windows of highest tides fall in November, December and January. NOAA predicts them on November 24 to 26, December 22 to 25 and January 21 to 23. The high tides on those days come in the morning, between 6:41 AM and 11:38 AM, depending on the beach and the day.

The same days bring the lowest tides of the season, in the afternoon. A king tide in the morning and a minus tide a few hours later are two sides of the same strong spring tide. In the November 24 to 26 window, the lowest daylight tides are −1.5 ft at La Jolla on November 25, −1.6 ft at Half Moon Bay on November 24 and −1.3 ft at Santa Cruz on November 24, in the afternoon between 3:55 PM and 4:31 PM. The San Diego page works out its tide pool days for NOAA's Point Loma station instead of the one used in the table above.

For tide pooling, these pages rate each daylight low tide of the next 30 days: La Jolla tide pools, San Diego tide pools, Half Moon Bay tide pools and Santa Cruz tide pools.

The California Coastal Commission's California King Tides Project announces the official dates each fall. The project picks a few days each winter and asks people across the state to photograph the shoreline at high tide on those days.

To take part, check the official dates on the project's page, then look up the time of high tide at your beach on its tide chart. Take your photos as close to high tide as you can, with your phone's location services on so each photo records where it was taken. Upload them through the project's page at coastal.ca.gov/kingtides, from a web browser or the Survey123 app.

For comparison, the project's dates for the 2025–26 season were December 4 and 5, 2025 (and 6 in some places) and January 2 and 3, 2026.