Eastern Tasmanian Surf Forecast by Ben Matson (issued Fri Aug 2nd)

Features of the Forecast (tl;dr)

• Easing size through the weekend with generally good winds, getting a little blowy Sunday though
• Small residual swell Mon/Tues with freshening offshore winds, becoming quite blustery at times
• Minor S'ly swell Wed PM
• Tiny/flat conditions through the second half of next week, the weekend and maybe beyond...

Recap

Surf size built to 8ft+ on Wednesday afternoon, easing to 6-8ft Thursday and now 6ft this morning. Conditions have been generally clean with light winds. 

Yes, it's been big

This weekend (Aug 3 - 4)

We’re now on the backside of this incredible easterly swell event, so expect size to abate slowly through the weekend. 

Surf conditions should be generally good for the most part. Freshening northerly winds this afternoon will reach a peak in strength overnight but should swing to the NW sometime early Saturday morning as the first in a series of fronts clips the state. We’ll probably see the breeze throttle into the afternoon too.

Surf size will be slowly on the way down from 4-5ft to 3-4ft, so there should be good options though southern ends and some  exposed stretches may have some leftover wobble first thing. It'll clean up as the day progresses

Smaller surf is expected on Sunday (2-3ft+ easing to 2ft+) and NW winds will restrengthen as another front passes to the south, allowing winds to swing gusty W’ly through the day. There’ll be waves but it’ll start to become quite inconsistent by this time and the winds may start to create a few issues as they gather strength.

Next week (Aug 5 onwards)

The remnants of the low responsible for this week’s swell will linger in the central/east Tasman Sea over the weekend (see below), and in doing so will maintain small levels of E/NE swell across the coast through the first few days of next week.

However we’ll see very windy conditions through this time frame as very strong fronts continue to push in from the west, so given the small surf size (1-2ft) it’ll probably be too blustery for anything worthwhile.  

The fontal front in this series will round the southern tip of Tasmania overnight Tuesday into Wednesday, and we may see a small south swell push up the coast by the afternoon, but it looks to be poorly aimed and will probably just glance the south swell magnets with occasional 2ft sets.

Long term maintains a similar zonal pattern through the Southern Ocean and therefore it’s highly likely that we’ll see an extended period of very small surf conditions persisting for the second half of next week and the following weekend.

Have a great weekend!