Nias, Mentawai, South Sumatra forecast by Craig Brokensha (issued Tue 14h Oct)

Best Days: Every day working around the winds and swell until Thursday week

This week and weekend (Oct 15 - 19)

A couple of good pulses of S/SW swell has filled in the last two days but less than favourable S/SE winds have limited surfing options away from exposed spots to more protected and smaller breaks.

We should see this morning's S/SW swell easing away slowly over the coming days, bottoming out Thursday to the 3ft to occasionally 4ft range at exposed south facing breaks in the Ments. More favourable E'ly winds are due tomorrow morning, but Thursday will see S/SE winds return and persisting into Friday.

Our next pulse of swell is due through Friday ahead of additional pulses Saturday and then Tuesday, all from the S/SW.

This will be a result of the storm track being focussed up towards WA, with a series of strong but not overly broad and impressive polar fronts moving through the edge of our southern swell window.

This isn't ideal but at least it will keep south facing breaks active. Friday's pulse is only due to reach 4-5ft+ in the Ments with 6ft sets around South Sumatra, while Saturday's will be the best of the bunch, offering surf in the 5-6ft+ range across the Ments with the odd bigger one possible in South Sumatra.

Winds should become light through Saturday across all regions before weak SE trades develop through Sunday and persist through most of next week. Saturday's swell should ease through Sunday and then bottom out Monday.

Next week onwards (Oct 20 onwards)

One final pulse of decent S/SW groundswell is due on Tuesday from a strong polar front firing up in the Heard Island region and projecting towards WA. This swell will be a similar size to Saturday's but a little less consistent. From here on there's nothing significant at all on the cards unfortunately with a series of blocking highs setting up across our swell window south-east of Madagascar, but more on this Thursday.

16 day Mentawai forecast graph
16 day Nias forecast graph
16 day South Sumatra forecast graph