Important notice: Tides has ben superseded by a much better program — JTides. This page is here for historical reasons and in order not to break too many Internet links. Please go here to see and download the new program.

Tides Home Page

Current Version: 3.8 (3/15/2001)

Here is Tides' appearance while running. You can choose from any of a large set of US and international tide and current prediction locations, you can animate the display to get a dynamic sense of the tide's behavior over time. You can create a database of tidal predictions for several years if desired.

What is Tides?

Tides is a very easy-to-use tide/current prediction program. Tides predicts tides and currents using a large database of US and worldwide locations. It graphs its predictions and even animates them. In comparison tests, Tides' predictions are in good to excellent agreement with a sampling of published and on-line tide tables (but read the caveat below). Tides is an MDI (Multi-Document Interface) application — this means many locations can be graphed at the same time. You may print prediction charts, copy a graphic image, or create application-portable databases of any size. Tides will also create sound files that provides the "sound of the tides." If you haven't heard what tides "sound" like, you simply must! Not the everyday sound of surf, but the sound you would hear if time were speeded up thousands of times, and as though the rising and falling tides created air vibrations. Here are some samples (in the form of small MP3 files): Anchorage, Alaska — a place where the tides are quite violent. Mataiva, Tahiti — a calm, mellow place with small, regular tides. Exploring tidal sounds is a whole new way of thinking about the world's oceans. Oh, I almost forgot the other good news. Tides is CareWare — that means no money, now or ever. You just have to care.

Obligatory Tidal Prediction Caveat IMPORTANT NOTICE At best, tidal prediction is a chancy business. It relies on field measurements and data collection that can be subject to any of several kinds of errors. Typographical errors, programming errors, and numerous weather and human activity error sources can contribute to a rather large level of predictive uncertainty. This guy wasn't listening ... Therefore, do not rely solely on the predictions offered by "Tides" if life or property are at stake.

Download Sorry! This program has been withdrawn after the UK Hydrographic Office pointed out that some of its data fell under their copyright. The new version of this program, JTides, doesn't have this taint. It also has no British Isles sites. Installation Instructions Download Tides, run the self-extracting executable, and the program will install itself. Run the program. Choose a location from the huge provided database and Tides will do the rest. Be sure to read the provided help file if difficulties arise, or if you wish to use Tides to its full potential. Version History 03/15/2000 - version 3.8. Added monthly calendar generator and print formatter. This feature allows you to create and print a month's worth of tide or current predictions at once. 04/07/2000 - version 3.7. Added daylight time options for sunrise/sunset time display. 02/11/2000 - version 3.6. Added days of the week to the date displays, fixed a printing bug. 02/06/2000 - version 3.5. Fixed a resource-absorbing error that affected Windows 98. Without this fix, long-running animations will gradually use up system resources. 02/05/2000 - version 3.4. Improved the 30-day graph's appearance and performance. 02/04/2000 - version 3.3. Added a rather neat 30-day display that shows the tides as colors. An entire month of hourly tidal predictions is graphed, with colors to represent tidal height. 02/02/2000 - version 3.2. Added a sound generator that reproduces the "sound of the tides" as a WAV file. Very interesting sounds are generated. 02/02/2000 - version 3.1. Changed the database storage method to allow faster table generation. Added more time increments to the database dialog. 01/31/2000 - version 3.0. Corrected a bug in the "Nearest Sites" search algorithm that sometimes listed sites out of their proper distance order. 01/25/2000 - version 2.9. Improved the "Nearest Sites" search algorithm, added more options. 01/25/2000 - version 2.8. Added more database options, cleaned up some small bugs. 01/23/2000 - version 2.7. After tests on Windows 98, put in some workaround code to avoid another Microsoft Windows bug. If you notice your present version of "Tides" won't save its visited sites, that is the reason — Microsoft's registry routines won't save a string with tabs in it — undocumented, and only on Windows 98, not NT. 01/22/2000 - version 2.6. Cleaned up some small matters, improved the computation accuracy further, added more shortcut keys. 01/22/2000 - version 2.5. Added sunrise and sunset computation, greatly improved the graphics routines and display, added support for daylight time. 01/21/2000 - version 2.4. Added Site Info dialog, rewrote the animation control method, and found a rather serious error that prevented correct site transitions in some cases. Those who need accurate tide predictions should replace previous versions with this one. 01/21/2000 - version 2.3. Added a "Nearest sites" finder. It locates tide and current stations nearest to a given location. 01/20/2000 - version 2.2. Cleaned up some bugs, added a recently visited sites list. 01/19/2000 - version 2.0. Initial public release. User Support Sorry — there is no user support. Please do not write and ask for assistance. Tides is basically free, and I cannot offer "customer support" for a free program. The provided help file is quite comprehensive.

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