Southern Tasmania Surf Forecast by Craig Brokensha (Mon 17th Feb)

Southern Tasmania Forecast (issued Monday 17th February)

Best Days: Thursday and Friday in protected spots

Recap

There were plenty of fun waves on offer over the weekend, with Saturday being the standout with NE winds favouring selected breaks. Sunday was less than ideal with an onshore breeze and similar amount of swell.

Today we're back to smaller 1-2ft waves under a more variable breeze that has since gone E/NE.

This week (Feb 17 - 21)

There's nothing of note over the coming two days, but heading into Thursday and Friday we're set for quite a dynamic period with a deep and powerful low pressure system expected to stall directly south of us.

The trigger for this low will be an inland surface trough drifting in from South Australia and feeding off a deep cold pool of air in the upper atmosphere right across the state.

This will result in the formation of a deep and powerful low during Wednesday evening and Thursday that's expected to stall over us.

The only worry with this system is that the models are still struggling to pick where it will sit exactly and the last two and most recent updates have pushed it further back west a touch each time (pictured both right).

This will be the main decider between a large S'ly swell and good surf in protected spots or a much smaller and less ideal SW swell event.

For the time being keep an eye on the model forecast updates as they'll provide the best indication of the swell direction and size, as well as the WAMs for an indication of where the low may sit.

This weekend (Feb 22 onwards)

Regardless of where the low may stall during Thursday this week, we will see the system pushed off to the east and out of our swell window into the weekend, with plenty of polar frontal activity expected to keep the coast active into the weekend and early next week.

We'll review this and the swell for Thursday and Friday on Wednesday though, so check back for an update.