Southern Tasmania Surf Forecast by Craig Brokensha (issued Monday January 3rd)

Best Days: Beginners tomorrow morning, selected spots Wednesday and similar Thursday but for beginners, possibly Sunday morning

Features of the Forecast (tl;dr)

• Tiny, mid-period W/SW swell tomorrow with varaible tending E/NE winds
• Inconsistent W/SW swell Wed with moderate E'ly tending stronger E/NE winds
• Fading surf Thu with strong E/NE winds, strong NE on Fri and near flat
• Strong S/SW winds Sat with a building S windswell, easing Sun with possible variable morning winds
• Small mid-period SW swell for Sun

Recap

The surf was tiny all weekend, cleanest yesterday morning while today we’ve seen a tiny uptick in small, weak W'ly swell.

This week and weekend (Jan 4 - 9)

Over the coming days the surf should increase to a more surfable size but at the peak we’re only looking at surf to 1-2ft across Clifton.

A weak frontal progression that started on Friday is now reaching its final stages south-west of us and with this we’ll see the swell filling in through Wednesday. Tomorrow should come in at 1-1.5ft while Wednesday will hopefully see 1-2ft sets though inconsistent.

Conditions look favourable tomorrow morning with a variable E’ly breeze, tending E/NE through the afternoon, while Wednesday is dicey with a moderate E’ly wind, strengthening through the day. This will only favour a select few locations.

Winds will become stronger from the E/NE on Thursday as the swell fades from 1-1.5ft with a deepening inland surface trough due to drift south from Victoria and across us.

This will see winds shift more NE on Friday while remaining strong ahead of a strong, evening S/SW change that will persist into Saturday.

A weak S’ly windswell is expected to be generated by the trough and change into Saturday and if we’re lucky we’ll see winds shift E/NE into Sunday as it eases. There also looks to be some inconsistent mid-period SW swell in the mix to a similar size, but we’ll take a closer look at this on Wednesday.

Longer term there’s nothing too significant on the cards but it’s probably worth checking the North East notes for more options.