Fading southerly swell with energy from the north-east next week

Craig Brokensha picture
Craig Brokensha (Craig)

Eastern Tasmania Surf Forecast by Craig Brokensha (issued Wednesday 22nd July)

Best Days: South magnets tomorrow for the desperate, later Tuesday through Thursday next week

Recap

Small levels of S'ly swell yesterday and today best suited to the south swell magnets for keen surfers.

This week and next (Jul 23 – 31)

Small, clean 1-2ft waves are expected to continue out of the S'th tomorrow morning from a front passing by the south-east corner of the state today. The swell will fade into the afternoon and become tiny into Friday and the weekend.

We then cast our eye north to another low that's forecast to develop in the Tasman Sea on the weekend.

A coastal trough currently sitting along the Queensland coast is forecast to drift slowly south later this week and over the weekend while deepening and again feeding off a small pool of cold air in the upper atmosphere.

This will result in the formation of a low off the NSW north coast which when combined with another injection of cold air from a cold front pushing up and across us Monday will see the low drift south and deepen further.

As the low starts to develop Monday an infeed of strong to gale-force NE winds will be generated through our north-eastern swell window, broadening and growing towards us while strengthening further Tuesday.

The low is then expected to be whisked away to the south-east fairly quickly this time with the swell producing winds moving out of our swell window Wednesday.

With this we should see a good increase in NE groundswell through Tuesday ahead of a larger E/NE spike on Wednesday.

At this stage Tuesday should see building surf to 3-4ft by late in the day, with Wednesday offering 5-6ft sets at the peak if all goes to plan, then easing rapidly on Thursday.

Winds will be favourable as well as the low stays east of us and a front moves through Tuesday evening bringing a W tending N/NW breeze, N/NW tending W/SW on Wednesday and then offshore each morning to follow with afternoon N'ly breezes.

We'll have a closer look at this again on Friday though.