Eastern Tasmanian Surf Forecast by Steve Shearer (issued Wed June 8th)

Features of the Forecast (tl;dr)

• Moderate sized S swell for Thu/Fri with W/SW-SW winds
• Larger S swell next weekend with W/SW-SW winds, peaking Sun at XL size
• More large S swell Mon/Tues next week 
• S swell expected through most of next week

Recap

New S swell kicked into the 3ft range yesterday and size has increased today with stronger S swell into the 4-6ft range at S facing beaches with mod/fresh SW winds on offer.

This week and next week (Jun 8 - 16)

The broad scale Southern Gyre is now setting up in the deep Southern Tasman, as Craig has detailed in his recent article. Strong high pressure support from a 1033hPa elongated high in the Bight is providing tight pressure gradients for the multiple fronts spinning off the gyre. That will lead to numerous over-lapping S’ly pulses over the coming week with a general step-ladder effect expected at least through to Mon. A general offshore flow will accompany these pulses as the fronts drive W’ly biased winds across the state.

In the short run and we’re looking at increasing S’ly swells over the next couple of days.  Expect surf to push up into the 5-6ft range at S facing beaches through tomorrow after an undersized start. Brisk W to SW winds continue so bring the rubber. 

Even stronger surf I expected Fri with surf pushing up into the 6ft+ range during the day as strong fronts continue to spin off the main low pressure gyre.

The weekend sees heaps more strong S swell. Sat will be the smaller day of the two with more strong S swell in the 5-6ft range at S facing beaches, easing back a bit during the day.

Sunday is a different story. The most powerful front in the series sweeps up past the state with severe gale to storm force winds sling-shotting around the parent low. This will generate very large levels of S swell, up into the 8-10ft range at S exposed breaks, under fresh to gale force W/SW to SW winds. 

Next week still starts with large S swell, down from Sundays peak but still in the 6-8ft range, easing during the day with mod/fresh SW winds.

Surf remains at elevated levels through Tues and Wed as the last of the cold fronts pushes through and the large gyre remains slow moving under the South Island. 

That gyre should produce a final pulse of long period SSE groundswell through Thurs with surf up into the 4-5ft range during the day under light NW winds. Pencil in that day. Surf then slowly eases back through Fri.

Into next weekend and we should see steadily easing surf as swell from the S quadrant eases in size.

Check back Fri for the latest update.