Southern Tasmania Forecast (issued Wednesday 30th April)

Best Days: Thursday morning for beginners, Saturday afternoon and Sunday in protected spots, Monday morning

Recap

Monday's spike in swell backed off as expected into yesterday with tiny waves across Clifton under offshores.

This morning an early onshore change wrote off any chance for a wave but with this change some new W/SW swell should of built this afternoon and reached 2ft+ across the coast.

This week (Apr 30 – May 2)

Today's change was weaker than expected on Friday and any swell generated by it is expected to fade rapidly overnight, with only 1ft to possibly 2ft sets expected across Clifton early tomorrow before fading into the afternoon.

Conditions will be clean and ideal for beginners though with a moderate NW tending N/NW wind.

A new long-range SW groundswell should arrive overnight Thursday and offer 1-2ft waves Friday morning, generated by a tight but intense and short-lived polar low south-west of WA earlier this week. Expect long waits between sets though.

This will be replaced by a mix of larger W/SW groundswell and S'ly windswell into the afternoon. The first W/SW swell is being generated by a strong polar low piggybacking over the polar low to the south-west of WA, but the S'ly swell will be associated with a deep and powerful Tasman Low forming off our East Coast. Both swells are due to reach 2ft+ later in the day, but winds will become poor and from the S/SW.

This Saturday onwards (May 3 onwards)

With the deep and powerful low forming just off our coast and stalling for most of the weekend, we're expected to see an infeed of strong to gale-force and persistent S/SE winds into the South Arm. This should generate a large and stormy S/SE windswell that at this stage looks to reach the 4ft range Saturday afternoon and come in at a larger 4-6ft Sunday.

Winds will only be favourable for protected locations though with a strong S/SE'ly Saturday and then S/SW winds Sunday as the low starts to move off to the east.

Come early Monday the low is expected to be gone from our swell window, and with it a rapid drop in size from 2-3ft or so is expected under W/NW tending SW winds.

Longer term there's the possibility for another large stormy S/SW swell Tuesday as a front pushing in from the west deepens significantly while pushing across us. But with the slight divergence on the position of the low over the weekend, we'll have to another look at this on Friday.