Southern Tasmanian forecast by Craig Brokensha (issued Monday April 14th)

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

Features of the Forecast (tl;dr)

• Moderate sized SW groundswell building tomorrow, peaking in the PM, easing Wed
• Smaller reinforcing SW swell Thu
• Moderate N-N/NE tending strong NE winds tomorrow, similar but weaker winds Wed
• Variable winds Thu, tending E/NE late
• Small inconsistent W/SW swell for Fri, easing Sat
• Fresh N/NE tending NE winds Fri, weaker N/NE Sat
• S winds Sun

Recap

A strong kick in swell was seen on the weekend following an increase through Friday, clean in the mornings ahead of relatively weak sea breezes.

Today a trough has brought an onshore change with smaller surf.

This week and weekend (Apr 15 - 20)

Our new SW groundswell for tomorrow is on track, though it looks to be delayed until the afternoon, with a reinforcing pulse due into Thursday.

These have and are being generated by a great couple of polar fronts projecting gale to severe-gale W/NW winds towards the polar shelf, right through our south-western swell window.

Tomorrow’s should build to a strong 3ft+ into the afternoon (smaller 2ft morning) with a moderate N-N/NE offshore, strengthening from the NE into the afternoon.

Wednesday looks temporarily smaller and to 2ft or so with slightly weaker N/NE tending NE winds set to favour selected spots all day.

Thursday’s swell should come in at 2ft+ and winds look variable most of the day ahead of later E/NE sea breezes, with an inconsistent W/SW swell due into Friday.

As touched on last week, this will be generated by a strong polar low that’s just formed around the Heard Island region.

A tight but strong fetch of gale to severe-gale SW winds will project towards Western Australia today, through our western swell window, and with this we’re only expected to see slow 2ft sets, with a reinforcing W/SW swell for Saturday morning likely to maintain 1-2ft waves.

Fresh N/NE-NE winds look to persist again through Friday with weaker N’ly breezes Saturday ahead of a trough and likely S’ly winds Sunday.

The models diverge regarding the swell and wind outlook for next week but we’ll have a closer look at this Wednesday.