Eastern Tasmania Surf Forecast by Ben Matson (issued Sunday 18th October)

Best Days: No great days. Just keep an eye out for small flukey lines of southerly swell Tues-Fri at south swell magnets. 

Recap: Building NE swells on Saturday reached 4ft into the afternoon, and conditions were mixed with variable winds trending southerly in the north but easterly in the south. Size has slowly eased today (along with some small south swell), still managing 2-3ft sets and conditions are cleaner with light winds from the southern quadrant. 

This week (Oct 19 - 22)

*This week’s Forecaster Notes will be a little erratic as Craig’s on annual leave*

There’s not a heck of a lot of swell on the way for this week.

A weak troughy pattern through the Tasman Sea looks to be focused more towards northern regions along the mainland's East Coast. And whilst the current synoptic charts shows a modest Tasman low to our northeast, its southern flank (i.e. inside our swell window) isn’t particularly strong. Worse, it’s tracking away from us.

As such, we can expect minor residual swells from the east over the coming days, certainly not worth getting excited about.

The only energy of real interest is a series of extremely flukey long period south swells, generated by a succession of powerful Southern Ocean lows migrating from Madagascar longitudes early in the week, and now pushing under the continent. 

However, they’re extremely poor in alignment for our region so I’m not confident we’ll see much, if any size. The leading edges of each swell should be around 20 seconds (watch it arrive at the Cape Sorell buoy from Monday night onwards), and set waves will be very inconsistent; the first swell is due to build through Tues and then ease through Wed, the second swell will build through Thurs and will ease through Fri.

Only a handful of reliable south swell magnets will pick up up any energy at all - this swell will bypass most of the coast. But, don’t be surprised if you see occasional line lines sweeping into the northern ends, delivering sporadic 2-3ft sets every twenty minutes at the height of each event (probably later Tues, and later Thurs). But most beaches will remain tiny to flat.

Local conditions look pretty good all week with no major driving force synoptically, so we’ll see light winds and sea breezes most days.

This weekend (Oct 23 - 34)

Nothing great standing out on the weekend’s forecast charts right now.

A southerly change is expected on Saturday morning, so conditions look a little blowy for the first half though should improve for the second half. A small southerly dwell will fill in behind it, though no major size or quality is expected.

A brief N’ly fetch off Southern NSW later this week may generate a minor NE windswell for the weekend but no major size is expected from this source either.

I’m more interested in the prospects for Saturday’s change to stall into a Tasman Low, delivering some easterly swell into Sunday - but this is a long time away right now. I'll have more details on this over the coming days.

Next week (Oct 25 onwards)

Nothing of interest for the long term period, aside from the possible Tasman Low next weekend that may linger to our east and provide easterly swell through the start of the following week.

See you Tuesday!