Southern Tasmania Surf Forecast by Craig Brokensha (issued Monday 4th May)

Best Days: Beginners tomorrow, Thursday, Sunday morning

Recap

Not overly big to start off Saturday as expected but into the afternoon and later in the day some larger swell started to kick, good for protected spots and into yesterday morning before easing.

Today the swell was smaller and fading from 2-3ft with better but still less than ideal conditions.

This week and weekend (May 5 - 10)

Looking at the coming forecast period and unfortunately it's still looking slow, as pointed out in Friday's update.

We do have one or two decent swells though, with the first due to peak Thursday morning across the South Arm.

But looking at tomorrow our swell from the weekend will continue to fade and only be tiny and to 1-1.5ft. Conditions will be clean though and ideal for beginners with a N/NW tending variable breeze.

Wednesday will be tiny to flat, but we then look at a very intense low forming south of WA this evening.

This low will track south-east while strengthening with a fetch of severe-gale W-W/NW winds due to track south-east through our western and then south-western swell windows.

Now, while the track and angle of the fetch isn't great, the strength is and we should see a good kick in size Thursday morning to 3ft on the sets across Clifton, easing through the day with fresh and gusty N tending N/NE winds.

The swell will be gone by Friday and there's nothing due on the weekend until Sunday.

Another strengthening and broader low forming west-southwest of us late week will project a fetch of slow moving W/SW gales through our western swell window.

A good pulse of W/SW groundswell should be seen to 3ft Sunday morning and a weaker front spawning off the weakening low will bring W/NW morning winds, onshore into the afternoon.

Longer term there's nothing significant on the cards so make the most of the coming windows of surf.