Eastern Tasmania Surf Forecast by Craig Brokensha (issued Monday 12th February)

Best Days: Late morning Wednesday at north swell magnets, Friday afternoon, Saturday, Sunday morning

Recap

Fading S/SE swell from 1-1.5ft on Saturday, with tiny levels of E'ly swell yesterday and today.

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This week and weekend (Feb 13 - 18)

The surf will remain tiny into tomorrow, but into Wednesday a fleeting and strong to gale-force N'ly wind developing down the coast will kick up a small pulse of N/NE windswell.

The swell will be really north and hardly getting into anywhere but north facing beaches, with a spike to 2-3ft through mid-late morning just as a strong W'ly change moves through.

All in all it's not worth trying to chase too hard.

We've got much more interesting developments on the cards from later this week, as touched on Friday.

Up in the Coral Sea we're set to see one of the longest lived retro-grading tropical cyclones I can remember.

Currently Sever Tropical Cyclone Gita is strengthening just east of Tonga with it due to cross Tonga as a category 5 system this evening. Please spare a thought for the tiny island nation.

What we'll see is Gita move slowly west-southwest while being cradled by high pressure to its south-west and south-east, with a small, tight but very intense fetch of E/NE-NE winds aimed in our north-eastern swell window all this week.

During the weekend the models have Gita dropping south through the Tasman Sea while making an exta-tropical transition. This will see gale to severe-gale NE and SE winds aimed through our swell windows, generating some more consistent swell energy.

What we can expect is some small and very inconsistent NE groundswell to start arriving across our region Friday, followed by bigger and more consistent surf through the weekend and especially into next week.

Forecasting size from such a tight, complex and rare system is hard, so I'm using model guidance at this early stage.

Friday morning only looks to be a very inconsistent 1-2ft, but an increase to 2-3ft is likely into the late afternoon evening.

Saturday should see a further increase more towards 4-5ft into the afternoon and then from there surf in the 6ft range is likely later Sunday through Tuesday, increasing in consistency.

Winds look favourable and offshore until Sunday afternoon when a surface trough moves in from the west and stalls while deepening just north of us, bringing persisting onshore winds. We'll have to confirm this Wednesday.

Also in the mix Saturday morning will be a strong S'ly groundswell from a deep polar low forming south of us Thursday, with sets due to come in around 3-5ft with NW winds, but more on this Wednesday.