Eastern Tasmania Surf Forecast by Ben Matson (issued Wednesday 16th October)

Best Days: Thurs: small E/NE swell with good winds. Sun: small/mod windy south swell, easing, abating and improving Mon. 

Recap: Surf size has been pretty small for the last few days. 

This week (Oct 14 - 17)

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It’s not a great surf period ahead for the east coast of Tasmania. But, we do have one swell inbound for the next few days. 

The weekend’s northern Tasman Low that set up camp off New Zealand’s north-west tip earlier this week didn’t quite perform as well as model guidance indicated on Monday.

I’m still expecting a new E/NE swell to build through Thursday - peaking late in the day - but confidence is a little lower now, so keep your expectations in check. Sets should slowly build with the end of the day holding somewhere in the 2ft, almost 2-3ft range at exposed spots. Fortunately, winds should be light for most of the day, so conditions will be clean. 

On Friday, we’ll see strengthening offshores as a series of powerful fronts approach the Tasmanian region. Thursday’s small swell will ease back from slow, early 1-2ft sets, so don’t expect a whole lot of action. Once the wind picks up it’ll definitely be too much hard work.

This weekend (Oct 18 - 19)

Tiny leftover swells and westerly gales are still likely on Saturday as the aforementioned frontal systems cross the state.

We’ll see building southerly swells into Sunday as these fronts slowly push into our south swell window (see below), but there’ll be a wide range in size across the coast - tiny at south ends, but up to 3ft, almost 4ft at exposed northern ends. Conditions will remain clean but it’ll be blustery under gusty offshore winds. It's hard to imagine there's be anything amazing on Sunday but there should be surfable options if you're keen to rack up some highway miles. 

Next week (Oct 20 onwards)

We’ve got a seemingly endless supply of Southern Ocean fronts moving through the lower Tasman Sea early next week, which will supply more S’ly swell across Tasmania’s East Coast. They will however be poorly aligned so we’ll only see small surf, fluctuating in the 2-3ft range at south swell magnets into the middle of the week, with tiny waves elsewhere. 

More in Friday’s update.