Southern Tasmanian Forecast by Craig Brokensha (issued Wednesday January 1st)

Best Days: Keen surfers Friday, beaches Saturday morning, keen surfers Tuesday and Wednesday mornings

Features of the Forecast (tl;dr)

• Small-mod sized W/SW swell for tomorrow, peaking in the PM, easing Fri
• Small-mod sized W/SW swell for Fri PM, easing Sat
• Early W/NW tending W/SW then strong S/SE winds tomorrow, N/NW ahead of S/SE sea breezes Fri/Sat
• Small SW swell Sun with strengthening S winds
• Easing swell Mon with E/NE winds

Recap

Happy New Year!

The surf has been tiny and clean through the mornings ahead of sea breezes, while today the surf has built a little to 1-2ft with winds shifting more cross-onshore.

This week and weekend (Jan 2 - 5)

As touched on in the last few updates, the current small increase in W/SW swell will be backed up tomorrow by some stronger energy, produced by a healthy but unfavourably aligned pair of storms moving in from the west since the weekend.

The best pulse of swell is due tomorrow with 2ft to occasionally 3ft sets due across Clifton into the afternoon, easing back from 2ft or so Friday morning.

Into Friday afternoon, we’ve got an upgrade in a reinforcing pulse of W/SW swell due, with a tight strong low that’s currently south of Western Australia currently generating a fetch of W/NW severe-gales in our western swell window.

The low will weaken while tracking east-southeast but should produce another good kick in size to 2-3ft Friday afternoon, easing from 2ft+ on Saturday morning.

Local winds tomorrow morning look W/NW before shifting W/SW and then strong S/SE into the afternoon as the swell peaks, with Friday coming in good with a N/NW offshore ahead of S/SE sea breezes.

Saturday will come in clean through the morning with a N/NW offshore before sea breezes kick up.

Now, our new swell for Sunday has unfortunately been downgraded but the local winds look average in any case the a south-east tracking low due to clip us, bringing S winds from about dawn along with what looks to be a small 2ft wave.

Winds may shift back E/NE on Monday but we’ll confirm this Friday.

Otherwise the outlook remains slow next week so make the most of the coming days.