Why don’t lakes have tides like the sea?

A view of Queenstown from across the lake with mountains in the background

Actually lakes do have tides but they are not usually big enough to see. Tides are changing sea levels mostly caused by the moon’s gravitational pull on the Earth. As the moon draws the sea towards it in one place in the world, the sea moves away from the coast somewhere else. The change in sea level depends on the size and location of the sea, how deep it is and the slope of the ocean floor at the coast.

Lakes experience the same gravitational pull, but because they are much smaller than seas their tides are also smaller and so more difficult to detect.

Answered by Kate Mulcahy.