Eastern Tasmania Surf Forecast by Craig Brokensha (issued Wednesday 16th October)

Best Days: Southern corners tomorrow and Friday, Saturday and Sunday mornings for the keen, Tuesday afternoon onwards

Features of the Forecast (tl;dr)

• Mix of SE and N/NE swells to end the week, best in southern corners
• Rare, inconsistent cyclone swell through the middle to end of next week

Recap

A fun N/NE windswell across the coast yesterday, cleaning up late in southern corners with a strong S’ly change, good again in these locations as a reinforcing N/NE groundswell failed to really provide the expected kick to 4-5ft. We still saw fun 3ft sets across the north-east swell magnets.

This week and weekend (Oct 17 - 20)

The trough and fetches linked to the last couple of days of N/NE swell have weakened temporarily through our swell window and the current southerly flow is from a deepening trough sitting just east of us.

We’ll see this trough generating strong SE tending E/SE winds this afternoon and evening, with the N/NE fetch down the southern NSW coast broadening and strengthening at the same time.

This will result in a mix of E/SE windswell tomorrow, peaking to 3ft, while the N/NE windswell reaches a low point early but builds back later in the day, though more so Friday with sets to 3ft at north-east magnets as the E/SE energy fades.

Winds are tricky but should blow from the S/SW favouring southern corners in the morning ahead of a shift to the SE mid-afternoon.

Friday will see another trough bring S’ly winds around dawn, strengthening through the day and swinging SE mid-afternoon again.

Moving into the weekend and there’ll be nothing major left across the coast, with background E/NE-NE energy from the northern Tasman and Coral Seas likely to keep open beaches active and to 2ft or so on the sets.

Both Saturday and Sunday look clean in the morning ahead of afternoon sea breezes.

A low point (in swell) is likely Monday but looking at the rest of the week, the models are holding steady regarding distant levels of inconsistent NE groundswell arriving from Tropical Cyclone Yasa mid-late week.

Yasa is currently sitting north-west of Fiji, with it now a Severe Category 5 system. STC Yasa will track south-east across Fiji, then slowly south, moving into our far swell window Friday morning.

As it does so it’ll squeeze the northern flank of a strong high over New Zealand, aiming a fetch of broad strong to gale-force E’ly winds with tighter, storm-force winds around Yasa’s core.

Cyclone swells are rare for our region, so we’ll be a little cautious on swell size, but long-period sets are due to build Tuesday with the size filling in more so Wednesday offering surf in the 4ft range through until Friday owing to the cyclone continuing drifting slowly south.

Winds are still to hard to call this far out, so check back here over the coming updates on the swell size, timing and conditions.