Eastern Tasmanian Surf Forecast by Steve Shearer (issued Mon Aug 5th)

Features of the Forecast (tl;dr)

• Last day of small leftovers Tues with freshening offshore winds, becoming quite blustery at times
• Minor S'ly swell Thurs
• Tiny/flat conditions through the second half of this week, the weekend and maybe beyond...

Recap

Fun waves over the weekend as E’ly swells slowly eases. Sat saw 4-5ft easing to 3-4ft with mostly offshore winds. By Sun there was a more pronounced easing trend with 3ft surf easing to 2-3ft under fresh W/NW winds. Today is seeing some small leftovers to 2ft with light NW winds gathering strength through the day.

This week and next week (Aug 5-16)

We’ve got weak high pressure in the Tasman and a trough and north-west cloud band linked to Indian Ocean moisture extending all the way down to Tasmania. Pressure gradients will stay weak in our proximate and medium range spheres of influence so as the current E swell ebbs away we’re in for a quiet spell on the surf front. Zonal fronts below Tasmania will bring plenty of W’ly ridging but not much surf so we’ll see tiny surf develop this week. Read on for details.

In the short run the last of the E’ly swell will ebb away through tomorrow with just the occ. 2ft set in the morning tending to tiny surf through the day. Mod/fresh NW winds will strengthen through the day and then moderate in the a’noon.

Tiny surf through Wed and into Thurs with fresh W/NW-W winds not offering much opportunity for a wave.

A front passing into Thurs may see a small bump in S swell but not much size in it- 1-2ft at best at S exposed breaks.

Freshening N’ly winds off the NSW coast may see some minor N/NE windswell into Fri but again, nothing more than 1-2ft. 

N'ly winds off NSW may see some minor NE windswell later this week

Tiny/flat surf then extends into and over the weekend with continuing mod/fresh W/NW-NW winds.

Into next week and a strong high in the Tasman will eventually send small E/NE swells down to temperate NSW. At the moment it’s a 50/50 call whether Tasmania will see any swell from this event. At least for the first half of next week we’ll see tiny surf with NW winds. By Wed we may see some small NE-E/NE swell filtering down off the back of the high. We’ll see how that looks on Wed.

Grab what you can of this current swell because it looks like an extended spell of tiny surf ahead with the Tasman high blocking swells from the south.

Check back Wed for the latest.