This Week's Best Low Tide Is Tuesday at 8:15 a.m. Of Course It Is.

The Gulf does not know you have a job.

Saturday at 11:50 a.m. is the new moon. When the sun and moon line up like that, the tides get bigger in both directions, and on Anna Maria Island that means the water backs way off the beach in the morning. Sandbars show up. Shells that were underwater all week are suddenly just lying there.

So I pulled NOAA's tide predictions for the Anna Maria city pier gauge to find the best one. It's Tuesday. At 8:15 in the morning.

The week, one morning low at a time

Heights are NOAA's predictions in feet. Sunrise is from the U.S. Naval Observatory.

• Saturday, Oct. 10: low at 6:16 a.m., 0.47 ft. Sunrise is 7:28, so you'd be shelling by flashlight.
• Sunday, Oct. 11: 6:55 a.m., 0.32 ft. Sunrise 7:29. Still dark, but closer.
• Monday, Oct. 12: 7:35 a.m., 0.23 ft. Six minutes after sunrise. On a Monday.
• Tuesday, Oct. 13: 8:15 a.m., 0.19 ft. The lowest of the week.
• Wednesday, Oct. 14: 8:59 a.m., also 0.19 ft if you round.

Tuesday technically wins by three-thousandths of a foot, which is less than a millimeter. It still counts. I don't make the rules. The moon does, and the moon has never had a commute.

Notice the low shows up about 40 minutes later every morning. That's the whole trick to reading a tide chart: it slides. Whatever worked last Sunday doesn't work this Sunday.

How to read the chart without a boat

Zero isn't sea level. NOAA measures from something called mean lower low water, which it defines as "the average of the lower low water height of each tidal day." So 0.19 ft means the water's about two inches above an average low. Negative numbers exist, and those are the good ones.

Two lows a day, and they are not equal. Saturday's evening low at 6:05 p.m. is 1.25 ft, less than a foot under that afternoon's high. The Gulf technically leaves, but it's standing in the doorway. This week, the morning lows are the real ones.

Same island, different clocks. NOAA's Bradenton Beach gauge runs a little over an hour ahead of the city pier. Sunday's low there is 5:42 a.m., and Tuesday's is 7:02. Check the gauge closest to where you're actually parking.

The weekend, honestly

The National Weather Service forecast has showers and thunderstorms Saturday at 80 percent, with a southeast wind gusting near 30. Sunday drops to 60 percent, with a chance of storms before 2 p.m. and scattered ones after. So Sunday's 6:55 low is the weekend's best bet. If you hear thunder, go home. The tide comes back twice a day.

The water's 82 degrees at the Port Manatee gauge right now, so wading out to a sandbar isn't a hardship.

If Tuesday isn't happening

The full moon arrives just after midnight on Oct. 26, and that week the city pier lows go below zero. The lowest is Wednesday, Oct. 28, at 8:21 a.m., at minus 0.25 ft. Also a workday. Naturally.

The first below-zero low that lands on a weekend at an hour a person would pick on purpose is Saturday, Oct. 31, at 11:31 a.m., minus 0.04 ft. Halloween. You were going to be carrying a bag around anyway.

The sun's on its own schedule too, by the way. We already wrote it down.

— Sandy