Southern Tasmanian forecast by Craig Brokensha (issued Monday February 10th)

Best Days: Tomorrow morning

Features of the Forecast (tl;dr)

• Building SW swell later today, peaking tomorrow, fading Wed
• N/NE tending strong E/NE winds tomorrow, mod-fresh N/NE tending strong NE Wed
• Small, mid-period S/SW swell for the weekend with S/SW winds
• Small-moderate sized W/SW groundswell for next Tue/Wed

Recap

We saw easing surf but with generally average conditions through the weekend, workable Saturday but small to tiny Sunday and sub-par.

Today the surf was tiny along with persistent onshore winds.

This week and weekend (Feb 11 - 16)

As touched on at the end of last week, a small pulse of fun mid-period SW swell is due later today but more so tomorrow, before easing into Wednesday.

The source was a healthy but not overly strong polar frontal progression, with a fetch of strong W’ly winds expected to generate 2ft sets tomorrow, fading Wednesday.

Winds tomorrow won’t be ideal but will be doable and out of the N/NE through the morning, strengthening from the E/NE through the day with Wednesday seeing fading 1-1.5ft sets under a moderate to fresh N/NE tending stronger NE breeze.

The rest of the week looks generally tiny with the next increase in swell arriving out of the south-west as a weak polar front pushes up and across us.

This will bring onshore winds and 2ft or so of weak swell for Saturday/Sunday, fading into early next week.

Our next noticeable swell is due next Tuesday afternoon/Wednesday, generated by a broad, strong polar low forming south-west of Western Australia this weekend.

The low will have tropical origins, with Tropical Cyclone Vince (which is in the middle of the Indian Ocean) due to track south and become absorbed into the westerly storm track, providing the catalyst for a broad, significant low to form.

The swell from this system looks W/SW in nature and to 2-3ft or so, but we’ll look at this closer Wednesday.