Fun S/SE swell tomorrow morning, NE swell for the rest of the period

Craig Brokensha picture
Craig Brokensha (Craig)

Eastern Tasmania Forecast by Craig Brokensha (issued Monday 19th January)

Best Days: Tuesday morning, Wednesday onwards northern corners (more open beaches Friday)

Recap

The weekend failed to provide any decent surf with the swells seen late last week fading away to nothing. A fresh pulse of S'ly groundswell due today came in as expected with good 2-3ft waves pushing up the coast with early favourable winds before onshores kicked in mid-late morning.

This week and weekend (Jan 20 - 25)

This morning's S'ly groundswell should be replaced by a secondary pulse of S/SE groundswell tomorrow morning, generated on the backside of the frontal progression responsible for this morning's swell.

We should see this keeping south facing beaches kicking in the 3ft+ range with 2ft+ sets at open beaches.

Winds will be best for northern corners though with an early N/NW breeze before strong N/NE winds kick up through the day.

These strong N/NE winds will be linked to a broad and elongated fetch of strong NE winds extending from the Southern NSW coast down and past our region, generating a solid increase in NE windswell later in the day tomorrow and Wednesday morning.

The winds aren't expected to reach the gale-force range as forecast last week, but we should still see north-east facing beaches kicking to the 4ft range later tomorrow and peaking during the morning Wednesday to 4-5ft.

Winds tomorrow as mentioned above will be poor but a weak trough trying to push across us Wednesday should see winds ease and tend more N/NW favouring northern corners, which will be a lot smaller and out of the swell.

The fetch looks to however re-develop through Thursday and persist into Friday morning, keeping smaller levels of NE swell hitting north-east facing beaches in the 2-3ft range into Thursday and Friday (more likely still around 3ft+ early Thursday).

Winds will generally persist from the NW to NE though with Friday seeing better W/NW winds.

Into the weekend a new pulse of NE trade-swell is due to fill in as a tropical depression in the Coral Sea squeezes against a ridge of high pressure in the Tasman Sea and dips south slightly.

This should produce a fetch of strong and persistent E/NE winds through our north-eastern swell window during the second half of this week, generating a fun pulse of short-range NE swell. The swell is expected to arrive later Saturday and peak Sunday to an inconsistent 3ft across north-east facing beaches. Winds look as if they'll persist from the northern quadrant though, but we'll review this again Wednesday.

Comments

bishmann's picture
bishmann's picture
bishmann Thursday, 22 Jan 2015 at 4:33pm

afternoon ,
will there be a wednesday update this week or will the next one be on friday now ?

thermalben's picture
thermalben's picture
thermalben Thursday, 22 Jan 2015 at 4:38pm

Not sure mate - Craig's away for the next two weeks so the task is left with me - and I'm pretty flat strap. I'll see if I can get some notes up later, but it's unlikely to happen Mon/Wed/Fri (with some luck, Tues and Thurs).