South Australian Forecast (issued Monday 12th January)

Best Days: Tuesday morning down South, Sunday morning down South, Monday down South

Recap

The weekend was poor with persistent and strong SE winds across the South Coast whipping up a poor and junky windswell while the Mid Coast was clean but tiny.

Today winds are swinging offshore down South cleaning up an easing S/SE windswell, but it's a race between getting the most size out of the swell and cleanest conditions.

We should see winds persisting from the eastern quadrant into the afternoon as the swell becomes even smaller.

This week (Jan 13 - 16)

Currently a surface trough/low is sitting just to our west, but this is forecast to start drifting east through this evening and into tomorrow, aiming a fetch of strong W/SW winds into the Mid Coast.

This should kick up a weak W/SW windswell to 1-2ft though the afternoon but conditions will be poor with a strengthening W/SW breeze.

A new S/SW groundswell should be seen down South though, with clean waves in protected locations under the fresh to strong W/NW tending SW breeze. Middleton is only expected to be around 2ft to occasionally 3ft, with 3ft to occasionally 4ft sets at Waits and Parsons.

Wednesday will be poor as strong S/SW winds persist across the South Coast in the wake of the trough, kicking up building levels of S/SW windswell. The Mid Coast will be a touch better with the S/SW breeze but small to tiny and easing from 1-1.5ft or so.

Give the surf a miss again Thursday as winds are due to remain onshore from the S/SW with easing levels of weak S/SW windswell.

Come Friday morning winds should swing back to the W/NW creating cleaner conditions down South but there'll be no decent groundswell in the water with tiny 1ft waves at Middleton and the stray 2ft set at Waits and Parsons.

This weekend onwards (Jan 17 onwards)

We should see some better swell activity over the coming weekend and into early next week as a strengthening node of the Long Wave Trough stalls over Victoria.

With this we should see a couple of strengthening polar fronts projected from the south-west of WA, up towards Victoria through the end of the week and weekend.

A couple of moderate sized SW groundswells are expected, the first for Saturday pulsing to 3-4ft+ at Middleton with 5ft+ sets at Waits before easing back slowly through Sunday and further Monday. The Mid Coast should see small 1-2ft sets Saturday before backing off from 1-1.5ft Sunday.

Winds Saturday will be poor as the front clips the state with a SW tending S'ly breeze, but Sunday should offer morning E/NE winds down South and then Monday looks best with an offshore N/NE tending variable breeze. We'll run over this again on Wednesday though.