King Tides 2026: The Dates South Florida Floods on a Sunny Day

Jump to a section

• What a king tide is, briefly
• The 2026 dates
• How bad is it expected to be this year
• Where it tends to show up
• It is not just the two cities that publish dates
• Why inland streets flood too
• What actually helps
• Who to call in your city
• How to track it in real time
• The longer story
• Sources
• Frequently Asked Questions

If you have ever driven down a coastal street on a cloudless afternoon and found a foot of saltwater across it, you have met a king tide.

The 2026 season is under way in Broward and Palm Beach County, and it runs through late December. One date stands out above all the others. The South Florida Water Management District lists October 27 as the annual maximum predicted tidal peak for Florida's east coast this year.

Here is what the agencies are forecasting, which days to plan around, and what actually helps.

What a king tide is, briefly

A king tide is not a storm. It is the highest predicted high tide of the year, driven by the moon's gravitational pull during new and full moon phases, strongest in the fall when seasonal currents and water temperatures push sea levels to their annual high.

The City of West Palm Beach notes that a king tide typically lasts about three hours. That is the useful part: it is not an all-day event, it is a window, and if you know when the window is you can usually drive around it.

Locally, the result is what agencies call sunny-day flooding: streets, sidewalks and parking lots temporarily under water with no rain involved.

The 2026 dates

The forecasts do not line up perfectly across agencies, and that is expected. Each one uses a different NOAA tide station and compares it against its own local elevation data, so Fort Lauderdale's list is not identical to Hollywood's, and neither matches the countywide windows.

South Florida Water Management District, east coast peaks

The season opened with an August 11-14 window. What remains:

Annual maximum predicted peak: October 27, 2026.

One note on moon phases. King tides track new and full moons, but the published lists label individual windows inconsistently across agencies, so we have left the labels off. The dates are what matter.

City of Fort Lauderdale

September 10-13, September 26 - October 1, October 7-13, October 24-31, November 5-11, November 22-28, December 24-25. The city adds December 5-8 as an additional period when tides may cause inundation in low-lying areas.

City of Hollywood

September 9-13, September 26 - October 1, October 7-13, October 24-31, November 5-11, November 22-28, December 5-8, December 23-27.

Palm Beach County

The county's Division of Built Environment Risk Reduction flags two windows as having the greatest potential for flooding: October 26-29 and November 24-27.

Notice how much overlap there is around the last week of October. If you only remember one stretch this fall, make it October 24 through 31.

How bad is it expected to be this year

Better than some years, with a real caveat.

Palm Beach County states that 2026 king tides are not predicted to reach flood stage, moderate flood stage or major flood stage. That is the county's baseline astronomical forecast.

The caveat is in the county's own language: various factors, including storms, may cause higher than expected sea levels and flooding. A sustained onshore wind or a passing system can turn a routine event into a wet one, and the prediction does not account for that.

There is a second reason not to read 'below flood stage' as an all clear, and it works differently on each side of the county line.

Broward measures tides at the South Port Everglades gauge. The official National Weather Service high tide flood threshold there is 1.87 feet NAVD. But when Broward County counts how many days actually flood, it does not use that number. It uses a locally observed threshold of 1.36 feet NAVD, because that is the level at which Broward streets really start going under. That is roughly half a foot below the official figure.

Palm Beach County's reference gauge is the Lake Worth Pier, where the NOAA and National Weather Service threshold is 1.85 feet NAVD. NOAA monitoring at Lake Worth Pier began in 2010. At South Port Everglades it began in 2018, which is why Broward's flood-day counts only run from that year forward.

The practical translation: a forecast saying tides will stay below flood stage is describing the official number, not the number at which your street floods.

Fort Lauderdale frames the scale differently. In his 2026 king tide message, Mayor Dean J. Trantalis wrote that NOAA predicts king tides in the city on at least 40 days this year, more than 10 percent of the calendar.

Two other things can push water higher than the forecast, according to the city: rainfall landing during a tide window, and a high groundwater table left over from a wet stretch. Compound flooding, where rain and tide arrive together, is the scenario the city specifically calls out for neighborhoods like Middle River Terrace.

Where it tends to show up

In Fort Lauderdale, the city's own planning documents point at Victoria Park, where drainage improvements are already under construction, and the Southeast Isles, where bonds have been issued to start work. Middle River Terrace is in the next phase, with design and permitting still ahead.

Along the Palm Beach County coast, The Coastal Star reports the familiar sights include Sportsman's Park in Lantana taking on the look of a lagoon, impassable roads around the Eau Resort and Spa in Manalapan, and residents wading to their cars in Delray Beach, Briny Breezes and Boca Raton.

The common thread is proximity: the Intracoastal, the barrier islands, the finger canals, and any low street where the storm drain outfall sits below the tide line.

It is not just the two cities that publish dates

Fort Lauderdale and Hollywood turn up in most king tide coverage, including the date lists above, for a simple reason. They publish the most detailed king tide pages. That reflects which cities post their forecasts, not which cities flood.

Across Broward and Palm Beach County, the exposure runs the length of the coast and reaches well inland along the canals.

Broward municipalities on the ocean, the Intracoastal or a tidal canal include Hallandale Beach, Hollywood, Dania Beach, Fort Lauderdale, Lauderdale-by-the-Sea, Sea Ranch Lakes, Pompano Beach, Lighthouse Point and Deerfield Beach, plus Wilton Manors and Oakland Park inland along the Middle River.

Palm Beach County has more of them, because so many municipalities sit directly on the Lake Worth Lagoon or the Intracoastal: Boca Raton, Highland Beach, Delray Beach, Gulf Stream, Briny Breezes, Ocean Ridge, Boynton Beach, Manalapan, Hypoluxo, Lantana, South Palm Beach, Palm Beach, Lake Worth Beach, West Palm Beach, Riviera Beach, Palm Beach Shores, Lake Park, North Palm Beach, Juno Beach, Jupiter and Tequesta.

Where has flooding actually been documented? CBS News Miami reported Fort Lauderdale, Pompano Beach, Hollywood and Hallandale Beach among the hardest hit during a combined rain and king tide event, with a stalled car sitting on one Hallandale Beach resident's front lawn for three hours. The Coastal Star reports the recurring Palm Beach County scenes include Sportsman's Park in Lantana, impassable roads around the Eau Resort and Spa in Manalapan, and residents wading to their cars in Delray Beach, Briny Breezes and Boca Raton. WPTV has covered low-lying flooding in coastal Boynton Beach and parking lots filling in Lake Worth Beach.

Four local governments publish their own king tide guidance: Fort Lauderdale, Hollywood, Pompano Beach and West Palm Beach. Broward County and Palm Beach County each maintain countywide pages. Most other municipalities do not, which does not mean they stay dry. It means you will be working from the county window and your own eyes.

Why inland streets flood too

This is the part most coverage misses. You do not have to live on the water.

Pompano Beach explains the mechanism plainly on its own flood information page. Most of the city's storm drainage flows into lakes and canals that connect to tidal waterways, including the Pompano Canal and the Cypress Creek Canal. Both canals have large drainage basins that take in stormwater from cities upstream, not just Pompano Beach. All of it eventually empties into the Intracoastal.

Two things follow. First, when heavy rain lands at high tide, the outgoing flow from the stormwater system slows, because the water it is trying to discharge into is already high. Second, the water level inside those canals rises during a storm from the cumulative runoff of every upstream community, which further limits how fast anything can drain.

So a street a few miles from the ocean, with no seawall and no water view, can still hold water on a king tide day if the canal it drains into is full. Fort Lauderdale describes the same pattern as compound flooding and names Middle River Terrace as a neighborhood where it happens.

If you have ever wondered why your inland street puddles for hours after an October rain but clears in twenty minutes in March, that is the answer.

What actually helps

• Plan around the window, not the day. A king tide peaks for roughly three hours. Check the tide time before you leave and you can often avoid the whole thing.
• Do not drive through it. Beyond the safety issue, saltwater does real corrosive damage to a vehicle, and it is not always covered. Fort Lauderdale also asks drivers not to create wakes, which push water onto private property and landscaping.
• Watch for dislodged manhole covers. The city specifically warns that high tides can lift them.
• Move your trash carts. A floating cart blocks a storm drain, and a blocked drain turns a three-hour event into a much longer one. Fort Lauderdale asks residents to bring carts in promptly after collection during tide windows.
• Boaters, check clearance. High tides mean lower clearance under fixed bridges. Check before you leave the dock.
• Know whether you are actually covered. Standard homeowner and renter policies do not cover flood damage. Fort Lauderdale residents can request a Flood Risk Information Letter from the city's floodplain manager, Richard Benton, at 954-828-6133, or look up a property's flood zone through the city's GIS application.
• Sandbags, with a caveat. Fort Lauderdale makes sandbags available to city residents at George English Park, Holiday Park, Mills Pond Park, the Floyd Hull/Morton Center and Riverland Park, on a weekend schedule running through November. Worth knowing before you drive over: the city's own king tide page currently gives two different schedules in two different sections, one saying the first Saturday and Sunday of each month and the other saying the third Saturday and Sunday. Call 954-828-8000 to confirm the weekend before you go.

Who to call in your city

Most municipalities do not publish a dedicated king tide hotline. What they have is a public works, utilities or customer service line that takes flooding and storm drain reports. Below are the numbers we have confirmed from each city's own published guidance. We are adding cities as we verify them, and we would rather leave a city off this list than print a number we have not checked.

If your street is impassable and someone is trapped in rising water, that is a call to your police department's non-emergency line, not to public works.

Broward County

Fort Lauderdale

• Customer Support Center: 954-828-8000
• Also the FixIt FTL mobile app, or fortlauderdale.gov/fixitftl
• Emergency notifications: fortlauderdale.gov/alertftl
• Flood zone questions and Flood Risk Information Letters: floodplain manager Richard Benton, 954-828-6133

Pompano Beach

• Customer Service: 954-786-4637
• After hours, 4:30 p.m. to 8 a.m., seven days: 954-942-2202
• Illegal dumping in a storm drain: 954-519-1499
• Online: pompanobeachfl.gov/report-issue
• Worth knowing: Pompano Beach City Hall operates Monday through Thursday, 7 a.m. to 6 p.m. The after-hours line covers evenings and all day Friday, Saturday and Sunday.

Dania Beach

The city publishes 954-924-6805 on its flood safety page as the number to call for assistance. Dania Beach notes that much of the city has no active stormwater pipe system and relies on swales, which is why the city asks residents not to park on them.

Hollywood

Hollywood publishes its own king tide date list, which appears earlier in this article, but we have not confirmed a dedicated flooding report line. Use the city's main line or its online service request until we can verify one.

Palm Beach County

Boca Raton

• Clogged or debris-covered storm drain: 561-416-3402
• Vehicle stranded in rising water: Boca Raton Police non-emergency, 561-368-6201
• City text and email alerts: myboca.us/SignUp

West Palm Beach

24-hour water, sewer and stormwater emergency hotline: 561-822-2210

Every other city

If your municipality is not listed above, call its public works or utilities department, or its non-emergency line, and use your county's forecast page for the tide windows. Broward County maintains a king tide page under its resilience section. Palm Beach County's guidance comes from its Division of Built Environment Risk Reduction.

One jurisdictional note that trips people up: cities do not maintain state roads or county roads, including much of A1A and the major east-west boulevards. Fort Lauderdale says it forwards reports about state and county roads inside city limits to the responsible agency. Not every city does, so if the flooded road is a state or county route, say so when you call.

Help us finish this list. If you call your city and get a working number for flooding or storm drain reports, send it to us and we will verify and add it.

How to track it in real time

The South Florida Water Management District publishes a Weekly Tidal Outlook throughout the season. You can subscribe by email through the district's signup page and checking the 'King Tide Forecast' option.

The district also runs automated king tide forecasts through its Resilience Metrics Hub for seven tidal stations. The two that matter locally are Port Everglades for Broward and Lake Worth for Palm Beach County.

Those forecasts are not raw NOAA numbers. The district partnered with the University of Miami Rosenstiel School of Marine, Atmospheric, and Earth Science to build refined local predictions that account for sea level rise, wind speed and direction, sea surface temperature and swell energy, which is exactly the set of variables that turns a predicted tide into a higher one.

The longer story

King tides are predictable. What has changed is the baseline they start from.

Fort Lauderdale has made resiliency a commission priority since 2020 and is working through a stormwater master plan covering seven neighborhoods, investing $1.5 million a year in restoring, elevating and replacing city-owned seawalls along critical transportation corridors, and maintaining a network of tidal valves that let rainwater out while keeping tidal saltwater from backing up into streets. The city now requires new seawalls to be built to a minimum top elevation of five feet, and it will cite property owners whose failing seawalls are flooding public roads.

That last detail is worth sitting with. In a place this flat, your neighbor's seawall and your street are the same piece of infrastructure.

Sources

• South Florida Water Management District, '2026 King Tide Season Forecast,' August 4, 2026
• City of Fort Lauderdale, King Tides and High Tides
• City of Hollywood, King Tides and High Tides
• City of West Palm Beach, King Tides
• Broward County, Local Conditions: King Tides
• The Coastal Star, 'Be prepared for a royal pain: King tides are coming,' September 2026
• SFWMD Resilience Metrics Hub
• NOAA Tides and Currents
• City of Pompano Beach, Flood Information
• City of Pompano Beach, Prepare for King Tides
• City of West Palm Beach, King Tides Return
• CBS News Miami, 'King tides, heavy rain flood South Florida streets, strand drivers'
• WPTV, 'King tides cause low-lying flooding in coastal areas of Boynton Beach'
• City of Pompano Beach, Stormwater
• City of Dania Beach, Flood Safety
• City of West Palm Beach, Report Water and Sewer Emergencies
• City of Boca Raton storm guidance, as published via The Boca Raton Tribune