Eastern Tasmanian Surf Forecast by Steve Shearer (issued Fri Aug 9th)

Features of the Forecast (tl;dr)

• Tiny over the weekend, just a small chance of marginal NE windswell Sun
• Small into next week, possibly small NE windswell Tues PM/Wed
• Small E/NE swell possible Thurs/Fri next week
• S swell on the radar for Fri/Sat next week
• Or possible chunky E/NE swell
• Check back Mon for revisions - there’ll be a few!

Recap

Small E’ly swells hung in there in the 1-2ft range yesterday under W/SW winds. Remarkably there is still some small, just rideable 1 occ. 2ft surf on offer today with offshore winds.

This weekend and next week (Aug 9-16)

No great change to the weekend outlook. High pressure to the north in the Tasman Sea and zonal fronts to the south set-up a regime of NW-W’ly ridging over the weekend, possibly tending  a little more variable to N/NW on Sun a’noon. 

No surf to speak of both days. Tiny to flat with just a small chance of a minor NE swell to 1ft on Sun for the very keen.

No change expected to the broad pattern next week with strong high pressure moving into the Tasman and a broad, deep E’ly fetch developing through the Coral Sea, with an embedded trough. That will be too far north to generate any meaningful swell for NETas under current modelling. We may see a slight bump in NE windswell Mon a’noon from winds off the South Coast of NSW. Nothing bigger than 1-2ft under NW winds so don’t burn fuel chasing it.

Back to tiny Tues before another slight bump in NE swell Wed from the fetch off the NSW Coast (see below) sees a few 2ft sets. 

Fetch off NSW coast generates some small NE swell for Tas

NE swell from the Tasman Sea should provide more fun surf in the 2-3ft range Thurs into Fri.

Further ahead, there is a frontal/low system traversing the Tasman Wed/Thurs week, with major models at variance over the strength of the system.

The more bullish GFS outlook would suggest a small pulse of S groundswell later Fri into Sat. 

EC then suggests a strong low pressure system moving into the southern swell window over the weekend with some strong S’ly groundswell expected up the pipe.

This is at odds with the GFS resolution which maintains a blocking high through the Tasman and a potential fetch off the North Island.

Low confidence with that level of model disagreement so we’ll flag these potential scenarios  for now and see how they look when we come back Mon.

Seeya then and have a great weekend!