Field Station 12 · North Atlantic Network

We keep a record of the water's breathing.

Pale Blue is an independent tide and lunar observatory — three coastal stations, one continuous listening. We publish what the moon does to the sea, in numbers you can set your boots by.

Current phase
Days into cycle
3
Active stations
1998
Recording since
01 · Lunar reading

The moon, computed for right now.

Calculating —

Derived from the synodic month — 29.530588853 days between new moons — measured forward from the new moon of 6 January 2000, 18:14 UTC.

Illumination
Moon age
Days to full

She pulls the whole gray ocean by a thread
of light we cannot see, and calls it tide.

02 · Tide curves

Twelve hours, forty-two minutes, and change.

Station: St. Malo
Range:
Next high:
Model: lunar + solar sine composite
03 · Field notes

What the record is for.

Every station on the network logs pressure at fifteen-minute intervals and reconciles it against the predicted lunar and solar constituents twice a day. The gap between prediction and measurement — the surge, the set-up, the wind against the water — is where the interesting weather lives.

We publish the plain curve because most tide tables hide the shape of the thing behind a column of numbers. The shape is the argument: two tides a day, never quite even, drifting later by fifty minutes as the moon drifts east of where it stood yesterday.

Low water keeps its own appointment,
arrives a little later every day —
an honest kind of lateness.

  • Established1998
  • Tidal constituents modeledM2 + S1
  • Sampling interval15 min
  • Stations reporting3
  • Longest continuous record27 yrs
  • Data licenseOpen, attributed