Eastern Tasmanian Surf Forecast by Craig Brokensha (issued Wednesday August 17th)

Best Days: Friday through Monday

Features of the Forecast (tl;dr)

• Inconsistent, mid-period E/NE swell building slowly Fri with freshening W/NW winds
• Stronger, inconsistent E/NE groundswell pulses for Sat with strong SW-S/SW winds
• Easing inconsistent swell Sun with W/NW winds, smaller early next week with W winds

Recap

Nothing major of note with a weak S'ly windswell in the water today that's now fading.

This weekend and next week (Aug 17 - 21)

As Steve 's touched on in the last few updates the outlook revolves around an inconsistent but prolonged E/NE groundswell event, emanating from a strengthening fetch of E/NE trades to the north and north-east of New Zealand.

This strengthening of winds to gale-force today, persisting tomorrow will be thanks to a trough sliding down a large blocking high sitting east of New Zealand. A classic trough block setup.

We should see inconsistent pulses of E/NE groundswell arriving on the weekend, but ahead of this, some less consistent mid-period swell is due to build Friday.

Inconsistent sets to 2-3ft are due on Friday, possibly increasing a little on dark but the best pulse of size is due on Saturday with good 4-5ft sets due across open beaches with 6ft bombs more than likely on the magnets.

There's likely to be an early morning pulse with a slightly possible lull during the day and secondary pulse into the late afternoon, easing slowly Sunday from the 3-5ft range.

With the fetch weakening fairly quickly and aiming more south, the swell will drop rapidly into Monday, easing from the 3ft range with 2ft leftovers on Tuesday.

Looking at the local winds and Friday will see freshening W/NW winds and then gusty SW-S/SW winds on Saturday during the peak of the swell, favouring southern corners. The localised S'ly swell from this source looks minimal.

Sunday should be good across open beaches with a persistent W/NW offshore, followed by strengthening N/NW tending NW winds on Monday.

Early next week as the swell eases should continue to be clean with W'ly offshore breezes.

Looking longer term it looks like we'll see some fun S'ly swell developing later in the week but more on this next update.