Eastern Tasmania Forecast by Craig Brokensha (issued Wednesday 30th April)

Best Days: Early Thursday for keen surfers, Sunday afternoon in protected spots, Monday morning

Recap

Yesterday started out tiny, but a small increase in NE windswell should have been seen during the day but with average N'ly winds.

Today a new S'ly swell was downgraded with the front pushing across us coming in much weaker than forecast on Monday. This instead resulted in a small mix of swells to 1-2ft with light to moderate S'ly winds.

This week (Apr 30 – May 2)

With the weakened change pushing through today, we're not expecting much in the way of swell tomorrow besides a leftover 1-2ft wave at open beaches under a favourable offshore wind.

Friday will become flat, so if you need to surf before the weekend, aim for an early tomorrow.

This weekend onwards (May 3 onwards)

We're starting to get some consolidation in the model forecasts for this weekend and we're in store for a windy and messy swell event.

A deep upper cold pool in the upper atmosphere will provide the catalyst for the formation of a deep and powerful Tasman Low directly off our coast on Saturday.

Most models are forecasting the development of a strengthen fetch of S/SE winds up past our coast that should reach the gale-force range at least.

This is only expected to take place later Saturday and more so Sunday, with a large but chaotic S'ly swell developing across mainly south facing breaks. Size is hard to pin down at the moment, with GFS having the low slightly further south and the swell bigger, while ECMWF has a slightly weaker system.

Gut feels says south facing beaches should reach at least 6ft through Sunday afternoon with 3ft waves at open beaches, but we'll have to keep a close eye on this and update on Friday.

Winds will in any case be strong from the S/SW limiting surfing options.

What we do know is that the low will move away quickly to the east Sunday evening and with this, a rapid drop in size is expected through Monday but under much more favourable W'ly winds.

Longer term we should see another solid increase in S'ly swell Tuesday/Wednesday next week as another strong cold break pushes across and then up the coast, but we'll review this and Sunday's swell on Friday, so check back then for an update.