There's not much downtime between events this year, with the waiting period for the Margaret River Pro kicking off this Friday, only 4 days after Wilko and friends racked up an impressive post final bar tab at the local Jan Juc pub.

In contrast to the surf outlook for Bells Beach, almost the entire waiting period will be dominated by a large upper atmospheric blocking pattern (opposite to a node of the Long Wave Trough). This will result in a double whammy: storm and frontal activity in the Southern Ocean will be subdued, and any storms that do form will being steered away from Western Australia's prime swell windows.

In saying this winds will be favourable and we've still got moderate amounts of swell on the cards, but nothing too large to get the Box and North Point firing.

Currently a strong polar low is dipping unfavourably through the south-eastern Indian Ocean. It’s due to eventually project north-east towards Victoria, but this will be too late inside Western Australia's swell window.

An inconsistent mix of SW and then S/SW groundswell are due for the first and second days of the waiting period, with inconsistent 3-4ft+ sets Friday across Main Break, with better 4-5ft sets out of the south Saturday morning, easing through the afternoon.

Trailing polar frontal activity should continue to produce moderate pulses of S/SW groundswell for Sunday and Monday to 4-5ft, with 6ft sets likely at the peak of the swell.

This is getting into the lower size limit for the Box, but unfortunately the winds will be unfavourable blowing from the E/SE. Still, the organisers will be keeping a very close eye on it and hoping the wind backs off or swings east.

The surf is then due to ease back through Tuesday.

Another strong but unfavourably tracking polar low should produce a fresh S/SW groundswell for Wednesday around 3-5ft, easing into Thursday but then likely followed by similar sized pulses for the rest of the period.

Conditions are looking good each morning from Friday through at least all of next week with fresh offshore breezes, although Saturday morning is the outlier with stronger SE winds.

We'll continue to provide updates on the coming event forecast in the comments below and future articles.