Southern Tasmanian Forecast by Craig Brokensha (issued Friday May 13th)

Best Days: No good days

Features of the Forecast (tl;dr)

• Tiny weekend and Monday
• Possible inconsistent S/SE grounswell in the background from tomorrow afternoon through Tuesday
• Inconsistent W'ly groundswell for Tuesday, fading Wednesday
• N-N/NW winds all period

Recap

A fun mix of easing E/SE and SW swell were seen to 2ft to occasionally 3ft yesterday, while today we’re still seeing 2ft sets in the mix with clean conditions.

This weekend and next week (Jun 13 - 20)

Any swell seen today is due to fade into the weekend with clean conditions but tiny surf due into tomorrow.

The coming outlook is then mostly small to tiny with the westerly storm track remaining more focused towards the mid-latitudes rather than polar, meaning any swell generating storms are coming in too north for the fickle South Arm swell window.

Sunday looks to remain tiny, similar Monday, but come Tuesday we might see a hint more action as an acute W’ly groundswell fills in.

The source of this swell will be a mid-latitude low forming south-west of Western Australia today, with its initial tight fetch of severe-gale to storm-force W’ly winds expected to be just within our swell window before the low goes a touch more north.

This should generate an inconsistent, tiny W’ly groundswell Tuesday to 1-1.5ft.

It should be noted that the models are picking up some long-period S/SE groundswell from tomorrow afternoon through Tuesday but I can’t identify the source so wouldn’t expect much from it. Keep an eye out for stray 1-2ft sets.

Winds through this whole period look offshore with persistent winds out of the northern quadrant, keeping conditions clean.

Longer term there is some better Southern Ocean frontal activity on the cards for next weekend, with a healthy progression due to fire up towards Western Australia and then move east through later next week. It’ll be west swell but check back here on Monday for the latest. Have a great weekend!