Eastern Tasmanian Surf Forecast by Steve Shearer (issued Wed February 15th)

Features of the Forecast (tl;dr)

• Small NE windswell Thurs/Fri 
• Small surf this weekend
• Possible NE windswell Tues next week
• Possible E/NE swell with onshore winds from mid next week

Recap

Solid surf yesterday from Ex TC Gabrielle with sets to 5-6ft under light winds. Today has seen an easing in size with sets to 3ft+ on an easing trend, clean early before freshening N’ly winds kicked in. 

This week and next week (Feb 15 - 24)

Ex TC Gabrielle (SS) is now on the eastern side of the North Island with swell generating winds also in the swell shadow of the North Island. A weak (1017HPa) high is covering most of the Tasman Sea with an active monsoon trough still supplying plenty of tropical moisture and instability across Northern Australia. Remnants of a trough near the South Island have set up a weak, off-axis fetch back into the Tasman Sea while transient N’ly fetches off the NSW South Coast supply some small, weak NE windswell. It all spells a much quieter period of surf ahead. 

In the short run and cyclone swell drops out of the mix with small NE windswell holding marginal surf in the 1-1.5ft range under mod/fresh N’lies. 

Just enough NE windswell to be surfable

Conditions should improve Fri under variable winds before a late S’ly change (possibly after dark) but surf remains in the tiny 1-2ft range at best.

Into the weekend and we may see a small S swell signal from the troughy change and passing front, with size 2ft or less. Early S’ly winds tend variable under a troughy pattern.

A front and low to the SW of Tasmania Sun should see a light NW flow but again, no real surf is expected with just tiny waves in the 1ft range.

Early next week doesn’t look much more exciting at this stage with small surf for Mon/Tues as a new high drifts SE of Tasmania. We may see some small pulses of NE swell Tues from a fetch off the NSW Coast, with size to 2ft.

From mid next week we may see some more juicy options start to unfold. We may see a slow moving trough linger off the South Coast, potentially setting up a proximate ENE’ly fetch aimed more at the South Coast and Tasmania generating onshore winds and solid NE-E/NE swell possibly from later Tues or Wed. 

Models are still not giving much run to run consistency so we’ll flag it for now with an early call of 3-5ft surf and onshore winds and come back Fri for the inevitable revisions. 

Check ya then.