One tide on the Charleston flats
Follow the water that floods one Charleston flat. Heat off the Gulf Stream comes back as a summer storm. The rain fills the Ashley, the Cooper and the Edisto. The wind holds the water out, and the low tide drains the flats. You don't pick the two hours. The tide does.
Then ask TidalMap when to launch, the way you'd ask a fishing partner. Free for 7 days on the web, iPhone and Android.
Every map shot is the live TidalMap app. The storm is a real one, 17 June 2022, replayed on the radar layer. The assistant answer is a real session, sped up, with tide times blurred. Not for navigation.
A tide is a place in time
High water does not arrive everywhere at once. It reaches the inlet first and works its way up the creeks, so the tide at your spot can run well behind the station printed on the tide table.
TidalMap shows the tide at every station on the chart at the same moment, so you can watch the water move across the flats instead of clicking one station at a time and averaging two high-tide times in your head.
Put the wind, radar, river flow and dam releases on the same map, and you can see which two hours the day is going to give you.
Transcript
Here's my advice, for whatever it's worth on the water.
Learn your tide. Not the tide table. Your tide.
Everything that moves it starts somewhere else.
Respect the Gulf Stream. It runs warm, and it keeps its promises.
That heat comes back in the afternoon as a storm. Don't be the last boat on the sandbar.
The falling rain fills the rivers. It always finds its way home.
Don't trust the wind. It'll hold the water out longer than you'd like.
And when the low tide drains the flats, the fish stack up in the creeks. Be there first.
You don't pick the two hours. The tide does. Your job is knowing which two.
Know when to launch.
And if you'd rather just ask, ask it like a fishing partner.
TidalMap. Trust me on the tide.