Indian Ocean Basin analysis by Craig Brokensha (issued Tuesday 31st October)

This week through next week (Nov 1 – 10)

The coming period remains slow across the region thanks to blocking high pressure across sub-tropical regions and reduced polar front activity in our more distant swell window.

Yesterday's small pulse of mid-period swell is due to be on the ease and we've got a secondary pulse of inconsistent S/SW energy from a late forming storm (in Eastern Indonesia's swell window), that should provide a minor bump in swell for Thursday before fading into Friday and further on the weekend.

The only other source of swell is small to moderate levels of background, mid-period S/SW swell from the weak frontal activity traversing the polar shelf with fetches of strong to sub-gale-force winds.

The activity will grow slowly stronger with back to back fetches on top of each other, generating building surf mid-late next week, likely peaking Friday. Following this the surf will fade.

Looking across to the Maldives and building levels of trade-swell seen through the weekend, peaking Monday are now easing slowly, with some background energy from more distant sources due to arrive tomorrow.

This should provide less consistent but good sized surf across exposed breaks tomorrow before slowly easing into Thursday and further the start of the weekend thanks to slackening trades throughout the Indian Ocean.

Weaker but persistent trades through next week should generate fun levels of background swell next week though only moderate in size.

Some fun background S'ly swell is also on the cards for Tuesday/Wednesday but we'll take a closer look at this Thursday.

Eastern Indonesia:

Small to moderate sized S/SW groundswell for Thursday, peaking to 3-5ft across the south swell magnets, easing into the end of the week and weekend.

Small, inconsistent background S/SW swell building Tuesday, reaching 3-4ft later, holding Wednesday.

Slightly stronger, inconsistent S/SW swell building Thursday (9th), peaking Friday (10th) to 4-5ft.

Moderate to fresh E/SE-SE trades, light and variable each morning. Trades tending more S/SE-SE next week.

Uluwatu 16-day Forecast Graph/WAMs

Western Indonesia/Mentawais/South Sumatra:

Small, weak levels of background S/SE swell to 3-4ft across exposed breaks tomorrow, fading into the end of the week and weekend.

Small, inconsistent background S/SW swell building Tuesday, reaching 3-4ft later, holding Wednesday.

Slightly stronger, inconsistent S/SW swell building Thursday (9th), peaking Friday (10th) to 4-5ft.

Moderate to fresh S/SE-SE winds across southern locations, more variable to the north with a S/SE-S tendency over the coming days.

Mentawai 16-day Forecast Graph/WAMs

Maldives:

Inconsistent, background SE trade-swell filling tomorrow, reaching 4-5ft across exposed breaks, easing slowly from Thursday morning.

Small to moderate sized SE trade-swell building Sunday to 3-5ft across the southern atolls, easing slowly into next week.

Moderate sized S'ly swell for later Tuesday but more so Wednesday to 3-4ft.

Persistent moderate to fresh E/SE-E winds across central and southern locations, lighter to the north.