South Arm Forecast by Ben Matson (issued Friday November 1st)

Features of the Forecast (tl;dr)

• Sat looking fun with clean waves
• Sun/Mon/Tues looking to be small and very windy
• Small surf Wed with lighter winds
• More surf due next weekend

Recap

Early Thursday morning offered a brief window of light winds and fun 2ft sets before the change spoiled things by 8am. The surf’s maintained a similar size today with early light winds tending onshore throughout the day. 

This weekend (Nov 2 - 3)

Sunday looks terrible with small leftover swells and strong to gale force N’ly winds tending W’ly. 

As such, Saturday is your best chance for a wave this weekend.

Wave heights are holding steady at the Cape Sorell buoy, though the period is low (owing to its nearby source of only modest wind speeds), however we should see fun waves around the 2ft mark at most South Arm beaches (even a few bigger sets at the swell magnets early on), with clean conditions under moderate northerly winds. 

Next week (Nov 4 onwards)

A deepening mid-latitude low located S/SW of WA today will develop nicely over the weekend, generating a solid regional swell for the start of next week.

However, the low is expected to track north of our ideal swell window (see below), so the resulting swell direction across Southern Tasmania will initially be more westerly than we’d prefer. Conditions will also be quite windy out of the W/NW to start the week.

Unfortunately, trailing fronts behind this low now look to be more zonal in orientation (west/east) which will limit size potential across the South Arm through the middle of the week. Local winds will however ease back from Tuesday onwards, and smaller long-period swell originating from a decent polar low (south of Heard Island today) will provide inconsistent sets around Wednesday in the 1-2ft range. 

No major swells are on the radar for the rest of the week, however we have a large Southern Ocean low expected to develop south of the continent around this time that should set up a strong swell for the weekend - probably Sunday - with better surf prospects expected around this time. More on this in Monday’s update.

Have a great weekend!