Southern Tasmania Surf Forecast by Craig Brokensha (issued Wednesday 18th August)

Best Days: Keen surfers and beginners tomorrow and Friday

Features of the Forecast (tl;dr)

• Inconsistent W/SW groundswell tomorrow, fading Fri with N/NW tending light E/NE-SE winds tomorrow, strengthening N/NE Fri
• Small S pulse filling in Fri, fading Sat

Recap

Monday afternoon's late, large kick in swell held solid into yesterday morning with 4-6ft surf across Clifton, best in protected spots with SW winds.

Today the swell has settled down and cleaned up across Clifton with fun 2-3ft leftovers.

This week and weekend (Aug 19 - 22)

After the recent run of chunky swell over the past couple of weeks, the coming period is a bit slower, though possibly getting more interesting late next week.

We'll see the swell from the start of the week continuing to ease into tomorrow, leaving small to tiny surf across Clifton. There might be 1-2ft sets, and an infrequent W/SW groundswell from an off axis fetch might help this cause, but it'll be best left to beginners.

Conditions should be clean with a N/NW offshore, giving into afternoon E/NE-SE breezes.

Friday looks to start tiny but into the afternoon, a small pulse of S/SE swell is likely, easing Saturday morning.

The source of this will be a late forming and weak polar front, south of us tomorrow, with a brief fetch of strong S/SW winds generated in our swell window.

No major size is due with sets to 1ft to maybe 2ft through Friday afternoon, tiny and 1-1.5ft Saturday.

A strengthening N/NE breeze will favour selected spots on Friday, N tending W/NW through Saturday.

Unfortunately looking at the coming days and weekend, stormy activity firing up towards Western Australia and South Australia will be positioned too far north to generate any decent swell for us. Instead we may see some better polar activity generating some better aligned swells mid-late next week, but more on this Friday.