Southern Tasmanian Surf Forecast by Craig Brokensha (issued Wednesday January 12th)

Best Days: Beginners tomorrow morning and Saturday, early Tuesday protected spots, Thursday next week

Features of the Forecast (tl;dr)

• Tiny fading surf tomorrow with fresh NE winds, fading Fri
• Tiny SW Sat with fresh NE winds, fading Sat
• Acute mix of W'ly swells for Tue and Wed with W tending SW winds Tue, S/SW Wed
• Easing mix of S and W swells Thu with variable tending NE winds

Recap

Clean conditions with easing 1-2ft sets yesterday, giving into onshore winds mid-late morning.

Today the swell is hanging in better than expected with a small reinforcing pulse under early light winds.

This week and next (Jan 13 - 21)

The small kick in size seen through today is due to ease tomorrow along with fresh NE winds, favouring exposed breaks. Size wise it only looks to be around 1ft and good for beginners in protected spots.

Friday looks near flat under strengthening NE winds.

On Saturday a tiny pulse of swell from a poorly aligned fetch of strong to gale-force NW winds is due, coming in at 1ft as NE winds persist. This will only favour beginners again before Sunday falls flat.

Into next week we've got a tricky, acute W'ly swell due owing to a mid-latitude low developing south of Western Australia, strengthening while pushing east towards us.

Initially it'll be too far north of our swell window but as we move into next week it's due to slip slowly east-southeast, generating weaker W'ly winds in our swell window.

This will result in mostly weaker levels of mid-period W'ly swell filling in Tuesday and Wednesday with smaller levels of groundswell in the mix.

Size wise we should see inconsistent 2ft sets on Tuesday and Wednesday with the odd possibly bigger one through this period, with the energy easing into Thursday.

Winds are an issue though with a dawn W'ly Tuesday quickly swinging SW as the low passes under us, persistent from the S/SW Wednesday as a high moves in. Cleaner conditions are due Thursday with a small mix of swells to 2ft, but more on this Friday.