Southern Tasmanian forecast by Craig Brokensha (issued Friday April 11th)

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

Features of the Forecast (tl;dr)

• Easing W/SW swell all weekend with N/NW winds ahead of relatively weak S/SE sea breezes
• Moderate sized S/SW groundswell filling in Tue with moderate N tending strong NE winds
• Easing swell Wed with moderate N/NE tending E/NE winds
• Small SW groundswell Thu with N tending S winds
• Small W/SW swell Fri with N tending S winds

Recap

A good pulse of new groundswell pushed back to 3ft through yesterday with clean conditions all day, smaller into this morning with early light winds ahead of an onshore change. Some new swell due this afternoon is now showing but only to 2-3ft or so.

This weekend and next week (Apr 12 - 18)

This afternoon’s building W/SW swell is due to peak this evening before easing slowly tomorrow and with sets only just reaching 3ft, the expected size for tomorrow has been pulled back a little to 2-3ft with Sunday easing from 2ft+.

Conditions will be clean tomorrow with a N/NW offshore ahead of relatively weak sea breezes, similar Sunday as the swell eases.

Now, early next week’s groundswell from gale to severe-gale W/NW winds moving in under the country through Sunday looks to have been upgraded.

The fetch is quite robust and should produce a strong pulse of swell for Tuesday, building to 3ft with moderate N’ly tending strong NE winds.

The swell will ease into Wednesday back from 2ft + with moderate N/NE tending E/NE winds.

A smaller reinforcing swell for Thursday from a less favourably aimed but still strong NW fetch is due to 2ft under morning N’ly winds.

Into Friday, a small W/SW swell is due, generated by a healthy but northward projecting polar frontal system to the south-west of Western Australia.

This doesn’t look to top 1-2ft before easing into next weekend.

Longer term the outlook is quiet until mid-next week when we may see increasing Southern Ocean frontal activity again. More on this Monday. Have a great weekend!