Eastern Tasmania Surf Forecast by Ben Matson (issued Friday 14th May)

Features of the Forecast (tl;dr)

• Small weekend
• Solid south swell Mon/Tues, easing later Tues/Wed onwards, generally good winds
• Small south swell Thurs/Fri, clean with offshores.
• Tiny next weekend onwards

Recap

Thursday’s decent NE swell is now easing across the region, there’s also a S’ly groundswell in the mix at exposed beaches. Offshore winds for the last few days swing to the south this afternoon.

This weekend (May 15 - 16)

We’ve had an extended run of surf out of the north-east, however this synoptic pattern is easing back ahead of a decent round of southerly swells.

However, the storm track for the Southern Ocean isn’t quite lined up within our swell window just yet. We’re expecting fresh winds for most of the weekend, initially S/SW on Saturday then swinging W’ly on Sunday - however wave heights will be small with residual E/NE energy in the 1-2ft range at exposed beaches. Keep your expectations low, as only southern ends will have workable conditions. Sunday will be even smaller, though cleaner as the breeze swings W’ly.

Next week (May 17 onwards)

A polar low pushing along the ice shelf under South Australia on Saturday is expected to line up nicely within our S/SW swell window, and will generate a solid south swell for Monday. 

These kinds of evens create a wide range in wave heights across the region, so keep this in mind - exposed northern ends could see 4-6ft sets, protected southern corners are likely to be very small - but with easing SW winds tending light W’ly, there’ll be options across most open beaches. 

The rest of the week is looking nice and clean with moderate to fresh W/NW winds as a series of fronts pass to the south, and we’ll see small fluctuating levels of south swell at the southerly swell magnets. Tuesday’s model guidance is underestimating surf size from a secondary front (calling 3-4ft when we could still be looking at 4-6ft surf) though by Wednesday we’ll be back to 2-3ft surf at the south swell magnets.

Long term from next weekend onwards appears to be very small thanks to a strong zonal pattern at Tasmanian latitudes, which is poorly aligned within our swell window - but we’ll have more on that in Monday’s update.