Eastern Tasmania Forecast by Craig Brokensha (issued Wednesday 7th January)

Best Days: Thursday, Friday morning in southern corners

Recap

Small levels of NE swell were seen to 1-2ft yesterday, while today it's started kicking again with 2ft to occasionally 3ft sets across exposed breaks.

This week (Jan 6 - 9)

The current NE swell event should continue into tomorrow and Friday as a broad and good fetch of NE winds remain aimed through our swell window tomorrow before retreating through the afternoon, but persisting off the Southern NSW coast through Friday and the weekend.

This should result in the NE swell peaking through tomorrow to 3ft across north-east facing beaches before easing slowly into Friday from 2-3ft.

Winds are expected to hold from the NW for most of tomorrow, while Friday will see a gusty S'ly tending SE change moving through leaving southern corners with the best waves.

The lingering fetch off the NSW coast should keep small waves hitting exposed spots through the weekend, while distant levels of E/NE trade-swell from above New Zealand should also prevent open beaches from dropping below 2ft.

The only issue are local winds and the change on Friday will be linked to a deepening trough moving offshore, directing fresh E/SE winds into us Saturday but also kicking up new levels of E/SE swell.

The strength and positioning of this system is still all over the shop and we may just see it absorbed back into a strengthening NE fetch next week resulting in E/SE tending NE swell either side of 3ft but with poor winds.

Either way winds don't look to become favourable until Tuesday/Wednesday next week, but we'll review this all again on Friday.

With this we should see building levels of SE windswell but along with poor winds.

With all the model divergence though we'll discuss both the E/NE trade-swell and SE swells in greater detail Wednesday.