Eastern Tasmania Forecast by Craig Brokensha (issued Wednesday 17th December)

Best Days: Thursday in northern corners for keen surfers, Friday morning, Saturday morning

Recap

Yesterday started small and clean with 2ft waves across most beaches and the odd bigger set at north-east swell magnets with a building NE windswell. The swell kicked strongly as expected and reached 4-5ft into the afternoon as winds swung stiff offshore creating excellent waves into the evening.

With last nights change, the fetch generating the swell was pushed off quickly out of our swell window resulting in the swell dropping rapidly back to a small 2ft or so this morning.

This week and weekend (Dec 18 - 21)

Tomorrow we'll see small and inconsistent levels of E/NE swell to 2ft+ or so across open beaches ahead of a much stronger pulse of groundswell late in the day, peaking Friday morning.

This swell has been generated off New Zealand's West Coast with a deepening low pressure system projecting a fetch of E/NE gales towards us for a short period last night before weakening into today.

A good sized E/NE groundswell should result, peaking mid-late morning Friday to 3ft to occasionally 4ft across exposed breaks. A drop is then due into the afternoon and much more noticeably into Saturday morning from 2ft+.

Winds tomorrow will be favourable and from the NW-N/NW most of the day and then Friday should see W/SW tending SE winds. Come Saturday offshore W/NW winds are due ahead of a late S'ly change and then freshening onshore NE winds into Sunday. It should be noted a small S'ly swell is likely across south facing beaches Sunday afternoon to 1-2ft from a small low pushing through our swell window Saturday. It's not worth chasing though.

Monday onwards (Dec 22 onwards)

The outlook for next week is still in the air as the models are in disagreement regarding the development of a small low off the Far NSW South Coast. With this divergence, we'll leave the update for next week to Friday when we should have a much clearer idea.