king tide

From king (“something preeminent”) + tide.

king tide (plural king tides)

1. An unusually high spring tide that occurs during full moon in the summer and winter months (when the earth is at perihelion and the earth, moon and sun are aligned).
   • 1994, Netherlands Institute for the Law of the Sea, International Organizations and the Law of the Sea: Documentary Yearbook, 1992, Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, page 373,

     As an illustration of our vulnerability, in 1990 and again in 1991, the largest king tides of the year in the Marshall Islands almost inundated Majuro′s urban area.

   • 2008, David Corlett, Stormy Weather: The Challenge of Climate Change and Displacement, UNSW Press, page 8,

     The unprecedented 2006 king tide was alarming.

   • 2008, Bob Shepherd, Circuit, Pan MacMillan, UK, unnumbered page,

     He told me that due to the interaction of certain moon phases with the broken coastline and offlying islands in that region, once every four years for four days they experience what are known as ‘king tides’. These tides can rise twenty feet above normal tide levels. The king tide phenomenon was not recorded in the tide tables or charts, so I had no way of knowing they existed when planning the exercise.

   • 2010, Margaret Somerville, Tony Perkins, Singing the Coast, Aboriginal Studies Press, page 91,

     Other fish, prawns and crabs come into the Lake on the king tides and swim up to the warm backwaters to breed.

• spring tide