Seattle's best tidepool run of 2026 is July 12–16, computed from NOAA station 9447130 — every day Exceptional, deepening to −3.80 ft MLLW on Tuesday, July 14 at 11:20 AM, the year's lowest daylight tide here. The place to work it is Constellation Park on the south side of Alki Point, where the Seattle Aquarium says pooling is best below 2 feet and eelgrass shows below 1 foot. And unlike the outer coast, these lows land mid-morning, not at dawn.
Puget Sound pulls its water back hardest around the mid-July new moon, and 2026 is the deepest daylight run of the year. The good news for anyone who is not a morning person: on inland water the timing is kind. The lows this week arrive between breakfast and lunch, not before sunrise.
When is the lowest tide in Seattle in 2026?
Tidewindow computes windows for the West Seattle and Ballard beaches from the NOAA Seattle station (9447130). Here are the eight deepest daylight lows of the year, ranked by depth, with the score that folds tide depth and daylight together.
| Rank | Date | Low (ft MLLW) | Time of low | Score |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Tue, Jul 14 | −3.80 | 11:20 AM | 90 |
| 2 | Mon, Jul 13 | −3.68 | 10:31 AM | 90 |
| 3 | Wed, Jul 15 | −3.49 | 12:08 PM | 90 |
| 4 | Sun, Jul 12 | −3.16 | 9:40 AM | 100 |
| 5 | Thu, Jul 16 | −2.73 | 12:55 PM | 90 |
| 6 | Tue, Aug 11 | −2.63 | 10:19 AM | 90 |
| 7 | Wed, Aug 12 | −2.48 | 11:07 AM | 90 |
| 8 | Mon, Aug 10 | −2.40 | 9:26 AM | 90 |
Computed 2026-07-12 from NOAA station 9447130 predictions, MLLW.
The five deepest daylight lows of the entire year all fall inside this one July week, and the rest belong to a smaller run in mid-August. Puget Sound saves its very lowest water for mid-summer and hands out very little the rest of the year — by fall the deep lows have all slid into darkness.
Notice the scores. Tuesday the 14th is the deepest at −3.80 ft but scores 90, while Sunday the 12th, two-thirds of a foot shallower, scores a perfect 100. Depth is only part of it: the window score also weighs how much of the low sits in daylight and how workable the day is, and a weekend low in full mid-morning light is about as good as tidepooling logistics get. In plain terms — Tuesday gives you the most exposed seafloor; Sunday gives you the easiest outing.
The July 12–16 Exceptional run
Deep lows come in runs of consecutive days around a new or full moon, each day's low landing roughly 45 minutes later than the last. In July 2026 that run rates Exceptional (90+) every day from Sunday the 12th through Thursday the 16th.
| Date | Low (ft) | Time of low | Tide window | Arrive by | Score |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Sun, Jul 12 | −3.16 | 9:40 AM | 7:15 AM–12:10 PM | 8:40 AM | 100 |
| Mon, Jul 13 | −3.68 | 10:31 AM | 8:00 AM–1:05 PM | 9:31 AM | 90 |
| Tue, Jul 14 | −3.80 | 11:20 AM | 8:50 AM–1:55 PM | 10:20 AM | 90 |
| Wed, Jul 15 | −3.49 | 12:08 PM | 9:45 AM–2:35 PM | 11:08 AM | 90 |
| Thu, Jul 16 | −2.73 | 12:55 PM | 10:40 AM–3:10 PM | 11:55 AM | 90 |
Computed 2026-07-12 from NOAA station 9447130 predictions. Scores (0–100) weigh tide depth and daylight together.
Watch the low time walk down the column: 9:40 AM on Sunday, nearly 1:00 PM by Thursday. Every low in the run lands in comfortable daylight, so the choice is really about your calendar. Sunday the 12th is the weekend pick and scores the run's only 100. Midweek, Tuesday the 14th is the deepest water of the year — worth a day off if you can take one. Independent corroboration that the numbers are real: the West Seattle Blog's beach-naturalist calendar lists Monday the 13th as "a −3.7-foot low-low tide at 10:30 am," essentially our computed −3.68 ft at 10:31 AM. The same new-moon pull runs the tide out across the whole region this week; the West Coast minus-tide roundup lines Seattle up against the Oregon and California coasts, and the two nearest sibling guides — Port Townsend up the Sound and La Push on the outer coast — run their own Exceptional stretches on these exact dates.
Where to go: Constellation Park and Alki
The best pools in Seattle proper are at Constellation Park, also signed as Charles Richey Sr. Viewpoint, on the south-facing side of Alki Point at 3521 Beach Drive SW. The Seattle Aquarium's beach guide describes its "two large rock lines where you can find sea stars, anemones, barnacles, crabs and algae," and calls it "a great location to take any age group tide pooling because there is lots of room to explore the intertidal." The parks page notes the shoreline here also takes in a small marine reserve at the end of 63rd Ave SW.
Two practical notes the Aquarium is explicit about: "There is no parking lot at this location" — free street parking only, so mind the driveways — and "There are no public restrooms at this park," the nearest being back at Alki Beach about a 7-minute drive north. Alki Beach itself, on the north side of the point, is the sandier, more developed side with restrooms and food, and works as a family basecamp on the same tides.
At the north end of the city, Golden Gardens in Ballard is the sandy-shore alternative on this station — gentler footing, easier for small kids, and one of the beaches the Aquarium's naturalists staff during big lows. For the rockiest pools and the widest exposed rock, though, Constellation Park is the one worth the drive.
The Puget Sound advantage: midday lows
If you have read our dawn-lows guide, you know the open Pacific coast forces its best summer tidepoolers out of bed before sunrise. Puget Sound does not. The Sound's tide is offset from the outer coast, so its deepest summer lows land in late morning and midday: this week from 9:40 AM Sunday to 12:55 PM Thursday. That is the quiet luxury of tidepooling in the city — you can have coffee first, and you get the year's lowest water in full daylight.
What you'll find in the pools
The last two months of community observations logged within a few kilometers of the station lean, unsurprisingly, toward sea slugs and snails. The most-reported animal is the Horned Nudibranch (Hermissenda crassicornis), a small striped sea slug, followed by the barnacle-eating dorid (Onchidoris bilamellata) and two dogwinkles — the Frilled Dogwinkle (Nucella lamellosa) and Striped Dogwinkle (Nucella ostrina). Rounding out the top of the list are Taylor's Seahare (Phyllaplysia taylori), which grazes on eelgrass blades, the Monterey Dorid (Doris montereyensis), the Rough Keyhole Limpet (Diodora aspera), the Lined Chiton (Tonicella lineata), and the big Gumboot Chiton (Cryptochiton stelleri), the largest chiton in the world. The Aquarium's own beach list adds ochre sea stars, gunnels, hermit crabs, and — on the deepest lows — octopuses tucked inside an old pipe on the beach.
Species reflect recent iNaturalist observations near the station (CC BY-NC, © the individual observers); NOAA is the tide-prediction data source. What you actually see depends on the day.
Beach naturalists are out this week
You do not have to identify everything yourself. The Seattle Aquarium Beach Naturalist program puts trained volunteers on the shore during the summer's biggest lows to, in the Aquarium's words, "educate members of the public on how to explore shorelines while keeping animals and their homes safe." The season runs from late May through July 2026, and West Seattle beaches are on the schedule. For this run, naturalists are set to be at Lincoln Park in West Seattle on Monday, July 13 from 9:30 a.m. to noon, right at the low. Golden Gardens is also a program beach. If you are bringing kids, timing your visit to a naturalist window turns a walk on the rocks into a guided lesson.
How to work the window
Use the arrive-by time in the table, not the low time — get onto the beach about an hour ahead so you can follow the water out to the lowest rocks as it drops. The footing is the real hazard here: the Aquarium notes Constellation Park "is characterized by large cobble, which is often covered in slippery algae," so step deliberately and test rocks before you commit your weight. Watch the tide turn and start back before it fills in behind you.
The other rule is for the animals, not you. Look, lift gently, and put everything back exactly as you found it — every rock you turn is the ceiling of someone's home, and an overturned rock left flipped cooks the life underneath. Leave the creatures where they live. That is the whole ethic the beach naturalists are there to model.
After July: the rest of 2026
August holds one more real run — the mornings of August 10–12 all drop past −2.4 ft, peaking Tuesday the 11th at −2.63 ft — and then the daylight tidepool season winds down fast. Seattle logs 14 daylight minus tides in July and 13 in August, but only 6 in September, and by late fall the deepest lows have all migrated into darkness: November and December have no daylight minus tides at all here. Summer is the season, and this week is its floor.
For the day-by-day view, the year heatmap shows how alone this July week stands on the 2026 Seattle calendar, and the trip picker finds multi-day runs like this one automatically. Chasing light as much as water? The golden-hour calendar flags the mornings when the low and the low sun line up. And for the wider Puget Sound picture across stations, the Puget Sound low-tide calendar puts Seattle next to Port Townsend and the rest of the Sound. Five days, one moon — and for once, no alarm before dawn.