Water from San Francisco Bay spills onto the Embarcadero on the morning of Thursday, Dec. 2, 2021, during the week of the King Tide.
It may be wet on the sidewalk along San Francisco’s Embarcadero this weekend.
The San Francisco Bay Area will experience exceptionally high tides and minor flooding along the bay’s shoreline on Saturday and Sunday mornings, the National Weather Service said. Extremely low tides will occur on Saturday and Sunday evening.
“Tide poolers and beachgoers should be familiar with the times and heights of local tidal levels to avoid hazards that may arise from rapidly shifting water levels,” the weather service warned.
David King, a forecaster with the weather service, warned that people at the beach can get into trouble by walking out to exposed tide pools during low tide and not returning to shore before the tide comes back in.
Water from San Francisco Bay spills onto the Embarcadero on the morning of Thursday, Dec. 2, 2021, during the week of the King Tide.
The astronomical tides, or king tides, usually occur in December and January, when the sun and moon reach their closest points to Earth, aligning the celestial bodies like a perfect cue shot to create maximum gravitation pull.
“We usually get two rounds of king tides in the winter time,” said King. “There’s usually one that happens in December. This is happening pretty much generally speaking when we expect.”
King Tides will impact the area the next 3 days & bring some of the highest & lowest tides of the year.
These tides will bring localized flooding to several low lying areas along the SF bayshore during high tide during the mid to late morning each day. https://t.co/TZ4mWUYPEf pic.twitter.com/jC4kQWSZVF
The high tides will be on Saturday at 10:30 a.m. (7.13 feet) and Sunday at 11:16 a.m. (7.11 feet), while low tides will occur Saturday at 5:23 p.m. (-1.7 feet) and Sunday at 6:13 p.m. (-1.76 feet). The level of the sea will shift some eight feet in a little over seven hours each day.
King tides are a preview of how sea level rise will affect coastal places in the future, the Environmental Protection Agency’s Climate Ready Estuaries program said.
“As time goes by, the water level reached now during a king tide will be the water level reached at high tide on an average day,” the program said.
The California King Tides Project is encouraging anyone near the coast to send in photos of the high tides, as part of its effort to increase understanding of what the state will experience as climate change causes sea level to rise.
The Associated Press contributed to this story.
Amy Graff is the news editor for SFGATE. She was born and raised in the Bay Area and got her start in news at the Daily Californian newspaper at UC Berkeley where she majored in English literature. She has been with SFGATE for more than 10 years. You can email her at agraff@sfgate.com.
