We have a follow-up front and trough expected to push into the Tasman later Sat, this time backed by a monster high (1042 hPa) in the Bight. Steep pressure gradients will create near gales to gales in a proximate S’ly fetch and whip up plenty of sizey S swell.
Primary tabs
We’ll see a spike of S swell from this system, downgraded from Mon. A following front and trough now looks stronger, earning an upgrade. More S swell into the middle of next week from polar activity tracking NE with good winds expected.
Thursday looks like a dynamic day. A trough deepens and inflames a strong S’ly flow along the NSW coast, extending into the Tasman.
Models are still struggling to resolve this trough but there are reasonable grounds to suggest the trough may deepen and form a surface low in the Tasman late next week.
Once that high moves offshore we’ll see N’lies kick in for the rest of the week with only a weak trough expected to interrupt that pattern. No major swells on the radar through the short or medium term.
After strong winds and unseasonal heat build ups we’ll see a more typical seasonal pattern for the short term with a high in the bight and a strong front pushing into the Tasman as a parent low slips under Tasmania.
We’ll see a deep parent low finally moving below Tasmania early next week after generating multiple large swells for Victoria. As the low moves eastwards we should see a final frontal passage through Bass Strait and with a fetch SE of Tasmania, generating a sizey S swell for early next week.
In the short run we’ll see the current severe gales out of Bass Strait (60kt gusts recorded at Hogan Island!) generate a stronger S swell for tomorrow.
The pattern of strong, zonal W’lies tied to polar lows and embedded cold fronts and weak mobile high pressure won’t offer much north of Seal Rocks but we will see some small S swells generated by gales out of Bass Strait this week with a mostly NW-W flow across southern NSW and NW-N in the sub-tropics.
A strong cold front will cross Victoria on Sunday afternoon, and we’ll see W/SW gales exiting eastern Bass Strait on Monday.