We’re in the middle of a winter-style pattern more common in August than November with a small low formed in along a front/trough line off the Gippsland Coast accelerating W’ly winds across most of the Eastern seaboard. A series of deeper fronts and lows are also transiting the lower Tasman as part of this cold outbreak. While they are not ideally positioned for maximal S swell production up the East Coast we are still looking at some useful S swell pulses over the rest of the week and into the weekend.
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While we won’t get the full payload of S’ly swell from this system as the system gets shunted SW as it enters the swell window (NE would be ideal!) we’re still on track for a few usable S swell pulses this week, with a trailing frontal system providing bigger S swell into and over the weekend.
Our Autumnal run of surf and condition is now going to be replaced by a more late winter-style pattern, dominated by W’ly winds. A complex low pressure gyre is located over Tasmania with a trough having moved offshore from the NSW coast and a cold front pushing through Bass Strait today.
Our Coral Sea low is now sitting just NE of Tasmania where it has merged with an exiting interior low to form a large, slow moving low-pressure gyre. Troughs are still snaking across Australia with a long trough line extending from the low pressure gyre through inland NSW up towards QLD and then into the Northern Territory, expected to move offshore through today. More inland troughs approach the coast during the rest of this week, driving an unstable but basically W’ly biased wind flow across the f/cast region through the end of the week and across the weekend.
A sub-tropical low which threatened SEQLD and NENSW over the weekend after it formed off the Capricorn coast is now steaming southwards at a fair clip, sliding along a high pressure ridge from a large (1035 hPa) high under Tasmania. The low is expected to merge with an inland low and horseshoe trough on the Gippsland Coast tomorrow forming a stalled low pressure gyre near Tasmania.
A trough of low pressure off the QLD Coast forms a small surface low over the weekend and this moves south Mon, interacting with a strong high moving south of Tasmania and another interior low forming in a trough line late in the weekend. This potent brew intensifies the NE-E/NE fetch forming in the Coral Sea and drags it south, where it more directly impacts temperate NSW.
We are in between patterns at present with a feeble trough delaying the start of the next pattern. That will see an approaching inland low and high pressure system generate increasing NE winds across most of the Eastern Seaboard. The onshore flow is enhanced into a deeper tradewind flow up in the Coral Sea, which gets a boost from a trough of low pressure expected to form off the Central QLD Coast this weekend. All of which is to say the dominant swell trains will be from the NE to E/NE through the short to medium term.
As mentioned last week we have a weak, troughy pattern in the Tasman with a broad area of high pressure now moving over the area and yet another complex low pressure system moving East across inland Australia. A series of fronts are rapidly transiting across the Lower Tasman with some small S swell pulses en route. The end of the week will see another round of chunky NE windswell develop, likely persisting over the weekend and into next week.
No great changes expected for the weekend f/cast. Surf-wise we’ll be on the gradual downslope of our extended E/NE swell event, which is expeced to linger at low levels into early next week.
Despite some slow periods between pulses the ASCAT (satellite windspeed) passes shows a long, broad fetch of strong winds with gales embedded around a tropical depression. That leads to high confidence in continuing pulsey swell from that South Pacific source fetch.