Swansea Bay and Gower Tides.

An interest in celestial mechanics and tides has prompted the writing of a tide predictor program for Swansea Bay and the Gower Peninsula (South Wales). It is based on the Simplified Harmonic Method of the Tides as documented in the rear pages of any British Admiralty book of Tide Tables.

Swansea Bay and in fact all of the upper reaches of the Bristol Channel experience a world-class tidal range. It isn't the biggest range in the world (that honour belongs to the Bay of Fundy in Cananda apparently), nor even the biggest in Europe (Mont St. Michel in Normandy, France has 14.5m apparently), but with a maximum range of about 10m, it is still the one of the biggest in Europe. It is difficult to live along this coast and not notice the tide!

Mumbles Slip: Spring High Tide (1999-09-28 08:00 hrs. Tide program calculated actual high tide to be 10.0 metres at 07:58 hrs BST that day). Caswell Bay East: Typical High Tide (2000-04-20 19:30 hrs. Tide program calculated actual high tide to be 9.2 metres at 19:25 hrs BST that day).

Mumbles Slip: Spring Low Tide (1999-09-28 13:40 hrs. Tide program calculated actual low tide to be 0.4 metres at 13:39 hrs BST that day. Caswell Bay East: Typical Low(ish) Tide (2000-05-14 10:50 hrs. Tide program calculated actual low tide to be 2.4 metres at 09:33 hrs that day.

I make my current version of the tide-predictor (Version 4.2.1) available under the GPL (GNU Public Licence) in a choice of four downloadable formats:

Swansea Bay Tides Program
Sources (pkzipped)	Sources (TAR-ed and gzipped)	Source RPM	Binary RPM (Intel i386/Linux)


Mumbles Slip: Spring High Tide (1999-09-28 08:00 hrs. Tide program calculated actual high tide to be 10.0 metres at 07:58 hrs BST that day).	Caswell Bay East: Typical High Tide (2000-04-20 19:30 hrs. Tide program calculated actual high tide to be 9.2 metres at 19:25 hrs BST that day).

Mumbles Slip: Spring Low Tide (1999-09-28 13:40 hrs. Tide program calculated actual low tide to be 0.4 metres at 13:39 hrs BST that day.	Caswell Bay East: Typical Low(ish) Tide (2000-05-14 10:50 hrs. Tide program calculated actual low tide to be 2.4 metres at 09:33 hrs that day.