Fluidzone Shark Island Challenge Forecast Update.

In: Fluidzone Shark Island Challenge by philgallagher 1 Comments Tue 10th Aug '10

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The official forecast for the event has come through. We would not normally bore you with these details but its an optimistic outlook for potentially this weekend. This forecast is provided by Ben Matson, Swellnet founder and head forecaster for the Shark Island Challenge.

This mornings strengthening NE winds are likely to create some major problems today. As such I recommend that we do not consider Tuesday as a potential event day for the FSIC.

The good news is that there's still some very interesting developments on track for the end of the week, with a deep surface low expected to form east of Bass Strait later Wednesday. This will drive a gale force southerly airstream up along the southern NSW coast on Thursday, which will in turn generate a large southerly swell in Sydney for the afternoon and probably most of Friday.

Local winds look pretty average during this time, and the swell direction will probably be straight southerly at the height of the swell (ie fat waves at the Island). So, at the moment I'm not especially excited about either Thursday or Friday's prospects for the FSIC.

However, the low is expected to track northeast to a position off NSW's South Coast by Friday, by which time it'll be weakening. Although this is expected to bring about a rapid decrease in wave heights into Saturday, the swell direction should swing more to the southeast, which will counteract the dropping swell trend at the Island.

And, local winds are likely to swing light westerly as a ridge of high pressure builds across the eastern states. Saturday's tides are excellent (1.63m at 11:30am), which is another bonus.

All of this points towards a potential event day at the Island on Saturday. I'll update tomorrow with the availability of more weather data.

Cheers, Ben Matson

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