San Francisco and Marin Face Flooding Amid Highest Summer Tide on Record

The weekend’s record-breaking tides caused some coastal flooding in Larkspur along Lucky Drive and Redwood Highway, as well as throughout the Golden Hind Passage neighborhood.

Water also flooded the sidewalk and spilled into the street in San Francisco near Pier 14 on the Embarcadero, disrupting pedestrians’ and cyclists’ paths.

The weather service said the biggest risks for flooding and hazardous conditions, including sneaker waves and strong rip currents, will be on south- and southwest-facing beaches.

Peaks are expected in San Francisco at 12:02 a.m. Tuesday and 12:56 a.m. Wednesday, but could vary by up to 90 minutes up and down the coastline.

“Never turn your back to the ocean,” weather service meteorologists wrote in their daily forecast discussion.

Meteorologist Rachel Kennedy said the weather service is predicting some isolated road and parking lot closures, especially along the Marin County shoreline and coastal Sonoma County.

“If you’re driving in those areas, [make] sure that you have an alternate route ready to go in the event that your normal path is encountering some coastal flooding, or you’re going to park in a parking lot that’s now got some flooding going on in it,” she said.

The high tides aren’t expected to rival January’s record-setting king tides, which peaked at 2.5 feet above normal after multiple particularly wet weeks.

The tides are driven by the phases of the moon, according to Kennedy, usually peaking around the new moon, which happened Sunday.

During the winter months, water levels have historically risen the highest, but meteorologists said at the time that extreme tides could become more common as the climate changes.

The Bay Area’s water levels have risen nearly 2 millimeters per year on average over the past three decades, and the ocean and the bay could rise by about a foot by 2050 — and more than 6 feet by the end of the century.

California is also expecting a strong El Niño this year, which usually brings stormier, wetter weather, and likely means more intense atmospheric rivers, major snow events in the Sierra Nevada, and larger waves, coastal flooding, and higher sea levels.