South Australian Forecast (issued Monday 22nd December)

Best Days: Later Wednesday for keen surfers on the Mid, dawn Thursday for keen surfers around Victor, Friday morning on the Mid

Recap

The weekend was fun across exposed breaks on the South Coast with offshore winds both mornings, persisting longer into Sunday. The Mid Coast was tiny and clean Saturday and then near flat yesterday.

Today winds were onshore early down South in the wake of a S'ly change yesterday afternoon, while the Mid was clean but tiny. A funky trough moving in from the west may swing winds offshore for a short period down South during the day, but it's not worth the drive from Adelaide as it may not even eventuate.

This week (Dec 23 - 26)

As touched on last week, there's plenty of SW swell on the cards for the state this week as a series of broad and relatively strong cold fronts push from the south-west of WA up towards the Bight.

Tomorrow will be poor with only a weak and local increase in S/SW windswell due from the trough moving across us this evening along with fresh to strong S/SW tending SW winds.

The better pulses of groundswell should kick strongly through Wednesday afternoon, peaking Thursday with a secondary solid pulse for Friday.

Unfortunately winds will spoil most of the swell with lingering and light onshore S/SE winds across the South Coast Wednesday as the swell builds. The Mid should be clean though but only around 1ft, pulsing to 1.5ft+ into the afternoon but with S/SW sea breezes.

A small window of W'ly winds is possible around Victor early Thursday and Middleton Bay will be the pick with sets to 3-4ft across the Middleton stretch and bigger 4-5ft+ sets at Waits and Parsons. Mid-morning though a gusty W/SW tending S/SW change will move through creating poor conditions that will persist into Friday with a fresh but easing S'ly breeze.

The Mid Coast will be the pick Friday under these winds with the secondary pulse of swell coming in at 1-1.5ft with early S/SE winds.

This weekend onwards (December 27 onwards)

Friday's swell will drop away through Saturday as winds continue from the S'th but without too much strength during the morning before fresher sea breezes kick in.

The next succession of cold fronts will fire up later this week and into the weekend producing another good round of SW groundswell from Sunday through Thursday next week. Size wise we're probably looking at a similar peak around 3-4ft at Middleton and 4-5ft+ at Waits Sunday afternoon and Monday morning, with 1ft+ sets on the Mid.

But.. winds look to remain a problem and generally from the S'th most of next week but without much strength. This may open up windows of more variable breezes and cleaner conditions but we'll look at this closer on Wednesday.