Eastern Tasmania Surf Forecast by Craig Brokensha (issued Monday 19th August)

Best Days: Possibly late Wednesday but more so Thursday and Friday when winds go proper offshore

Recap

Tiny surf on Saturday, with a new N/NE windswell building through yesterday but conditions were generally poor at spots seeing the swell with winds out of the north.

This morning was the pick with easing 2-3ft sets with offshore winds, likely tiny this afternoon.

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This week and weekend (Aug 20 – 25)

As talked about in the last update, the outlook for later this week was a little unsure as the models diverged on the cold outbreak and whether a low will form off our coast.

The models are now in agreement and we've got a prolonged southerly groundswell event as a strong node of the Long Wave Trough focussed across New Zealand steers significant cold fronts up and through our southern swell window.

The wave models are showing an increase in size Wednesday, but the swell will be too west in nature and the frontal activity too zonal until late in the day and more so Thursday.

Therefore we'll see tiny to flat conditions over the coming two days, possibly building late Wednesday but increasing in size Thursday as a fetch of gale to severe-gale SW winds are projected past the south-east corner of the state, swinging more S/SW into Thursday and then pushing off to the east on Friday out of our swell window.

Fresh SW tending S/SW winds are due on Thursday as the S'ly groundswell builds spikes to 4-5ft+ across south swell magnets through the afternoon.

Friday looks like the day to surf though with excellent offshore W/NW tending NW winds and easing S/SE swell from 4-5ft across south swell magnets, smaller at other beaches.

Saturday will be clean again but the swell likely small and fading from 2ft on the magnets.

Longer term another weaker front moving up and past us on the weekend looks to generate a small S'ly swell for Sunday, but more on this next update.