South Australian Forecast (issued Monday 17th August)

Best Days: Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday afternoon, Friday, Saturday South Coast

Recap

Super fun weekend of waves across the South Coast with a building swell under morning offshores and a weak afternoon sea breeze, while Sunday was excellent with a solid, clean easing swell under favourable winds. The Mid Coast was clean but tiny all weekend.

This morning a strong polar front pushing up and into us brought an onshore change but strong building S/SW swell while the Mid continued in the tiny 1ft range with deteriorating conditions.

This week (Aug 18 - 21)

This afternoon's large kick in S/SW groundswell should ease back into tomorrow and further Wednesday with great conditions for the South Coast.

Tomorrow will still be solid early with dropping 3-5ft sets at Middleton and easy surf in the 6ft range at Waits and Parsons under light N/NE tending E/NE winds.

Wednesday will become smaller with fading 3ft sets at Middleton and 4ft surf at Waits with fresh to strong N/NE winds.

A small pulse in S/SW groundswell due Thursday has been upgraded in size with the polar front generating it forming a little earlier and stronger in our swell window tomorrow.

The morning will start small to tiny, but the afternoon should see Middleton build to 3ft+ with 3-5ft sets at Waits and Parsons under moderate to fresh N/NW tending lighter NW breezes. So aim for a post lunch surf Thursday.

Come Friday the swell will drop rapidly from 3ft at Middleton and 4ft at Waits with N/NW tending W/NW winds.

The Mid Coast will see a bit of activity from Friday afternoon and more into the weekend as two separate broad but relatively weak cut-off lows aim weak fetches of W'ly winds through the Bight.

The first and weakest fetch through Friday should kick up a weak increase in W'ly swell to 1-1.5ft later Friday, easing from a similar size Saturday.

The secondary low will be a touch stronger but have a smaller and dicier fetch, producing a slight kick in W/SW swell to 1ft+ later Sunday, peaking Monday to 1-1.5ft.

The South Coast will miss out on these swells and offer fun small waves from background swell energy under favourable wind Saturday, more W'ly Sunday.

Longer term some long-range SW groundswell energy is due from mid-next week with some larger surf possible at the end of the month. More on this Wednesday.