Southern Tasmania Surf Forecast by Craig Brokensha (issued Monday 11th January)

Best Days: Beginners Wednesday morning, Friday before the change, next week

Features of the Forecast (tl;dr)

• Fading mid-period SW swell tomorrow though onshore
• Small, inco W/SW groundswell building Fri with N/NW tending W/SW winds
• Building SW tending S/SW swells from the weekend owing to the LWT

Recap

Fun, small, clean 1-2ft waves Saturday and Sunday mornings, a touch smaller today with our new mid-period swell looking to be a bit weak.

This week and weekend (Jan 12 - 17)

Similar sized, tiny surf is due tomorrow as the swell from today fades away, 1-1.5ft early and tiny thereafter. Winds will unfortunately swing onshore around dawn, W/SW on day break and then stronger SW tending S'ly to follow as a trough moves through.

No decent size is expected from this trough with tiny windswell waves into Wednesday along with a better N/NE tending strong E/NE breeze.

Our next noticeable increase in swell energy is due Friday, generated by a good looking, though distant polar low that's formed just east of the Heard Island region. Today a fetch of W/SW gales are being generated through our medium-range swell window, but the low will weaken tomorrow and project north-east out of our swell window.

An inconsistent, small, W/SW groundswell is due from the low, building Friday and peaking to 1-2ft into the afternoon, fading Saturday.

The window for clean conditions and the building swell is small with a dawn, fresh N/NW offshore, swinging W/NW by late morning and then stronger W/SW into the afternoon/evening.

This will be linked to a small low moving in and across us, but the swell generating properties are poor.

A better aligned, secondary low pushing up and under us through the weekend looks to generate some better swell for Saturday afternoon and Sunday but with onshore SW winds, even bigger early next week as a stronger system again forms on the tail of the second.

This will be the result of a node of the Long Wave Trough moving east across us and strengthening across the Tasman Sea, though we'll have more detail on this Wednesday and Friday.