Southern Tasmanian Forecast by Craig Brokensha (issued Friday August 1st)

Best Days: Tomorrow and Sunday selected spots, Thursday

Features of the Forecast (tl;dr)

• Easing surf into tomorrow morning ahead of a strong, moderate + sized S/SW groundswell mid-late PM
• Swell easing rapidly Sun, tiny Mon
• N/NW tending E/NE winds tomorrow, strong N-N/NE on Sun
• N winds Mon
• Small, inconsistent W/SW groundswell for Tue PM with NW winds
• Better W/SW groundswell for Thu with NW-W winds

Recap

Yesterday was tiny and clean but today we’ve seen building levels of groundswell, clean and 2-3ft this morning with stronger 3ft+ waves this afternoon.

This weekend and next week (Aug 2 - 8)

Today’s strong pulses of groundswell are expected to dip temporarily into tomorrow morning, with the final strong low forming south-west of us today expected to bring with it a late afternoon increase in long-period S/SW groundswell.

The low is generating a great fetch of storm-force W/SW winds south-southwest of us, with the low pushing quickly east into this afternoon/evening, out of our swell window.

With a travel time of just over a day, we’re expected to see the surf dip to 2ft to maybe 3ft tomorrow morning before pulsing on dark to 4ft.

The fast track of the low will mean the well will fade quickly on Sunday, dropping back from 2ft to maybe 3ft.

Local winds look good for selected spots tomorrow with a light N/NW tending E/NE breeze with strong N-N/NE winds due all day Sunday.

Into Monday the surf will bottom out under N winds, while come Tuesday, a very flukey, long-period W/SW groundswell is due to move in, generated by a strong, distant polar low that fired up around the Heard Island region last night. The low is projecting unfavourably towards Western Australia and with this we’re only due to see a possibly slow 1ft to maybe 2ft wave through the afternoon under NW winds.

We’re looking at a better swell producer moving in from the Heard Island region over the weekend, projecting more towards us early next week, producing a better W/SW groundswell for Thursday more to the 3ft range. We’ll confirm this on Monday though, have a great weekend!