Eastern Tasmanian Forecast by Steve Shearer (issued Fri Jul 4th)

Features of the Forecast (tl;dr)

• Fun, easing E swell Sat with NW winds
• Small leftovers Sun
• Small, fun NE swells next week, likely Tues, easing then rebuilding Wed into Thurs
• S swell likely Frau next week with SW winds

Recap

Large surf from the E/NE was in the 8ft range yesterday with stormy conditions under robust S/SW-S winds. Today has settled a notch into the 5-6ft range with offshore winds supplying clean conditions.

This weekend and next (July4 - July 11)

No great change to the weekend f/cast. The complex, coastal low is now dissipating and drifting towards New Zealand while high pressure drifts NE to sit over sub-tropical NSW/SEQLD tomorrow before entering the Tasman on Sunday with a broad low pushing across the interior of Victoria and NSW behind it.

Winds will swing NW then N as high pressure passes to the north of the state. Conditions should be clean most of the morning so you’ll get to make the most of the easing E swell which should see sets to 3-5ft early, softening through the day.

By Sun we’ll be back to small leftovers in the 1-2ft range or less from the E/NE-E. Winds will trend more variable, possibly light S’ly as a trough moves off the NE Coast. Not much strength in the winds so if you can find a small, surfable wave it should be OK conditions.

The trough is linked to a broad low which moves off the South Coast o/night Sun into Mon and does aim up some useful swell generating winds for NETas. Not much size Mon- just some minor NE-E/NE swell to 1-2ft but through Tues we should see some building surf to 2-3ft offer fun waves under NW winds which will freshen through the a’noon as a front approaches from the W.

Strong W’lies into Wed, with tiny surf, trending more SW-S/SW as a low enters the Tasman Thurs. We may see some minor NE windswell wrap later Wed or more likely Thurs.

 Models are divergent on the strength of the front wth EC suggesting a more robust system capable of generating quite sizey S swell Fri into the weekend (3-4ft at S exposed breaks). 

GFS has a more modest system progged with lesser size over the same period. 

We’ll flag it for for now and dial in size and timing when we come back Mon.

Further ahead, typical winter pattern with high pressure up over the continent and fronts and lows sweeping up from the southern ocean. At present most of these systems look to favour the southern states. We’ll certainly see S swells of some dimension going forwards with nothing major under current modelling. 

Still some indications of troughiness in the Coral Sea on the long range charts and while it would be unusual to see anything develop there as we move into the second of July, warm SST’s mean anything can happen.

We’ll see how it looks on Mon. Until then have a great weekend!