The main features for the weekend are a rapidly easing swell and a steadily abating wind that'll tend westerly on Saturday before becoming light and variable on Sunday.

The headline act is a complex low system approaching Tasmania with an embedded front and linked to a long inland trough. A NE infeed into this system is producing swell from that quarter today and as the low clears the swell shadow of Tasmania we’ll start to see swells from the S. Following systems next week look to generate stronger, longer period S’ly swells.

The weekend outlook has one main trend for the swell (down) but a few interesting fluctuations in the wind department.

A front and small low are now racing across the Tasman with a high over NSW moving into the Tasman and directing a freshening N’ly flow across most of the Eastern Seaboard down to Tasmania. So far, so spring. A complex low, front and trough then approaches from the W, bringing a strong regime of W’ly-SW’ly winds and a series of S swells.