Glass Beach Tides: Timing the Walk from North Beach in Port Townsend

NOAA station 9444900 (Port Townsend) has no remaining 2026 windows below +1.0 ft MLLW with at least 30 minutes of daylight overlap. The last four — September 22 and October 5–7 — have passed, and every remaining below-+1-ft interval through December 31 falls entirely in darkness. The next qualifying window in the available predictions is January 16, 2027. The chart below now covers October 21 – November 30, 2026; the 2027 rows are comparisons, not a reopening schedule.

A tide chart is useful here, but it cannot supply the whole walking plan. The +1.0-ft threshold is not a verified route-access cutoff for Glass Beach. It is the shared threshold in Tidewindow's methodology, used to compare low-water periods across stations. No route-specific passability threshold, turnaround rule or walking-duration allowance is established by these tables.

North Beach and the route descriptions

Jefferson County lists North Beach Park as a public-access waterfront adjoining Fort Worden, describing it as “one of the few public access beaches on the north end of the Quimper Peninsula.” Its official listing identifies parking and other facilities.

A 2017 Spokesman-Review report describes an approximately three-mile shoreline route west from the North Beach lot at Kuhn Street, past McCurdy Point toward Glass Beach. Beachcombing Magazine's 2020 article calls the trip six miles round trip. These are published route descriptions, not current access or condition reports. They do not establish that a particular tide height makes the whole route passable.

The Port Townsend and Fort Worden guide covers the neighboring park context and carries the complete Port Townsend tide chart — every predicted high and low at station 9444900 — through October 31. Sharing a prediction station does not make every shoreline section's access requirements identical.

The 2026 daylight windows: all four have passed

The selection below covered September 12–December 31, 2026 at Port Townsend when it was computed. “Daylight overlap” requires at least 30 minutes of daylight somewhere in the below-+1.0-ft window. It does not require the low itself, or the whole window, to occur in daylight. All four dates are now past; the rows stay here as a dated record.

Computed September 12, 2026 from NOAA station 9444900 predictions and Tidewindow's daylight calculation; re-verified against the committed predictions on October 21, by which date all four had passed. Heights are feet relative to the station's MLLW datum; all times are local. The score combines depth, daylight and calendar factors, not route access.

October 5 made the distinction clear. Its low was at 5:48 AM, before sunrise. The below-+1-ft period lasted from 3:55 AM to 7:55 AM—four hours, or 240 minutes—but only 39 minutes overlapped daylight. That did not describe four daylight hours on the beach.

October 6 had the most daylight overlap of these four rows, at 67 minutes, while October 5 had the highest score, 27. Both rankings were station comparisons, and the table never established a walkable route on any of the four dates.

October, November and December each have 22 lows below +1 ft at this station, but after October 7 none meets the daylight-overlap criterion (re-verified October 21). That is a result of this station filter, not an announcement that Glass Beach is closed. The full station tide chart below and the October and November Port Townsend calendars include the complete daily high/low predictions, including dates that do not appear in this short selection.

Glass Beach tide chart: Port Townsend predictions, October 21 – November 30, 2026

There is no separate tide gauge at Glass Beach; the chart for this shoreline is the Port Townsend station's, NOAA 9444900. The table below lists every predicted high and low there from October 21 through November 30, 2026 — November is the latest complete month in the committed prediction files. Heights are feet relative to MLLW, times are local, including the November 1 return to Pacific Standard Time. It answers one question — when the station predicts low water — and cannot answer the other two a walker needs: whether the route is passable at that height, and whether there is enough daylight around it.

Computed October 21, 2026 from NOAA station 9444900 predictions, MLLW. Friday, November 13 has no predicted low within the calendar day; its overnight lows fall on the neighboring dates.

For planning a long shoreline walk, this chart is almost entirely a caution. All 24 minus tides in the range land between 8:11 PM and 3:07 AM local time — after sunset or hours before sunrise — including the deepest, −3.51 ft at 10:14 PM on Wednesday, November 25. None of the 41 dates in the table has a below-+1.0-ft period with at least 30 minutes of daylight overlap. The per-date daylight-window math is on the October and November calendar pages, and the Port Townsend and Fort Worden guide reads this same station chart in tide-pool terms rather than walk-timing terms.

Selected low-water windows in early 2027

These are the five lowest qualifying lows in the October 1, 2026–March 31, 2027 comparison period, displayed in date order. They are not every winter window, the first five qualifying dates, or a reopening timetable.

Computed September 12, 2026 from the same station predictions and re-verified against the October 21, 2026 committed data. The selection is ranked by low height before being displayed chronologically; it is not a full-season ranking by daylight or score.

The first qualifying window of 2027 in these predictions is earlier than any row above: January 16, a +0.62 ft low at 4:49 PM with 56 daylight minutes, scoring 22 (Skip). It qualifies on the 30-minute overlap rule without being among the five lowest, which is why it does not appear in the selection.

February 17 has the deepest low in the selection, −1.64 ft at 7:06 PM, after sunset. Its 57 daylight minutes occur earlier in the window. February 15 has a shallower −0.77 ft low and 158 daylight minutes, scoring 65 (Good).

March 15's below-+1-ft interval is 2:20–6:50 PM: 270 minutes, all within daylight in the model. That is the longest overlap among these five selected rows. It is not the first fully daylight window of 2027, and 270 minutes does not establish that a six-mile shoreline walk plus beachcombing can be completed. Tide depth, time in daylight and route access remain separate questions.

For other dates in the prediction dataset, the Trip Picker compares station windows within a chosen date range. The short table above cannot answer “first,” “only” or “best” for dates it does not include.

Why there is glass there

The Spokesman-Review's 2017 account describes Glass Beach as a former city-dump site used until the 1960s. It reports that waves continued to uncover and tumble fragments from discarded bottles and other glass. That is historical context, not a forecast of the amount of glass on the shore today.

The sea-glass timing guide and winter beachcombing guide discuss the broader beachcombing context. No tide prediction measures how much glass is exposed or guarantees a find.

A summer comparison, not an access promise

Port Townsend's July 13 and 14, 2026 lows both rounded to −3.48 ft; the July 14 window included 375 daylight minutes. July had 25 qualifying daylight-overlap windows and 21 daylight minus tides; August had 21 and 13 respectively. These historical counts use whole months within the July–December 2026 fact-sheet period, not a full-year record.

That is a strong seasonal contrast in the station data. It does not establish that a long walk was trivial to schedule in summer, or that a future summer date will be passable.

The Tide Window Finder covers the next 30 days; the Trip Picker handles a later date range. The station page and its month calendars show the underlying tide context. All are prediction tools, not route-clearance tools: actual conditions and access information are separate from the astronomical tide calculation.