South Australian Forecast (issued Monday 24th November)

Best Days: Wednesday morning on the Mid for keen surfers, Friday morning, early Saturday and Sunday morning down South

Recap

The South Coast was good Saturday but a little windy with a small easing swell under fresh offshores before a mid-late afternoon change pushed through. Sunday saw a new W/SW groundswell swell starting to fill in with variable winds across the South Coast and clean 1-2ft sets on the Mid.

The groundswell really kicked through the afternoon though on the Mid, reaching the expected 2ft to occasionally 3ft as weak sea breezes tended more variable into the evening creating good waves across most breaks.

Today the swell is back to a small 2ft on the Mid, while the South Coast is messy and poor 3ft with strengthening onshore winds.

This week (Nov 25 – 28)

We've got an average week of waves ahead for the South Coast and this is mainly due to local winds.

Today's onshore change is linked to a cold front clipping the state and behind it a slow moving and broad high pressure system will move in resulting in winds slowly rotating anti-clockwise from the SW tomorrow to the S'th Wednesday and then SE Thursday and then E Friday.

Under this scenario the Mid Coast will fair the best with onshore but 1-2ft waves continuing through tomorrow before cleaning up under S/SE winds Wednesday morning and easing from 1-1.5ft.

A series of S/SW groundswell pulses are due across the South Coast, the biggest tomorrow with a secondary slightly smaller increase Friday morning and this will be the morning to surf with winds tending E/NE through the morning. Most locations should come in at 3ft with the odd bigger set at Waits and Parsons.

This weekend onwards (Nov 29 onwards)

Winds should be even better and from the NE at least Saturday morning down South but the swell will be easing quickly from the 2ft+ range across most beaches.

Sunday is the day to surf as a good new long-range S/SW groundswell peaks under offshore N'ly winds during the morning ahead of an early afternoon W/SW change.

This groundswell will be produced by a vigorous polar low skirting around the southern flank of the strong high sitting to our west, generating a fetch of severe-gale W/SW winds through our southern swell window.

A strong but inconsistent 3-4ft wave should be seen at Middleton with 3-5ft sets at Waits under the morning offshores. The Mid Coast is only due to see a tiny 0.5-1ft wave but conditions will become choppy as the day progresses.

Into the following week there's nothing significant at all on the cards unfortunately but we'll review this Wednesday.