South Australian Forecast by Craig Brokensha (issued Wednesday 4th May)

Best Days: South Coast every day until Monday, Mid Coast for keen surfers tomorrow and more so Friday onwards

Recap

Stormy building waves to 3-4ft across the Mid Coast yesterday with strong W/NW winds, while the South Coast saw clean good 4ft waves off Middleton with offshore winds.

Winds increased and tended more W'ly as the swell started to kick more, leaving protected breaks with the best conditions.

This morning a peak in swell was seen across the coast with large clean 6-8ft waves off Victor with bumpy 3ft waves on the Mid Coast. Cape du Couedic showed some incredible figures with Significant Wave Heights hitting over 8m last night at peak periods of 18s.

The buoy has been steady around 6-7m and between 16-18s providing large waves across all of the state.

This week and weekend (May 5 - 8)

South Coast: From this evening we'll see the swell start to tail away, but the easing trend will be slow due to the fact that this wasn't just one single storm moving through our swell window, but a vast prolonged fetch of gale to severe-gale SW winds aimed through our swell window for a few days.

Middleton should still be offering sets in the 6ft range tomorrow, easing into the afternoon and further Friday from 4ft or so. Waits and Parsons will be much bigger and out of the question until more so the weekend.

Conditions are looking great tomorrow with an all day offshore N/NW breeze, while Friday looks to see light W/NW tending SW winds.

Into Saturday a new W/SW tending SW swell is due across the coast, produced by a good looking but relatively weak (to what we've just seen) polar front pushing up and through the Bight over the coming days.

This will produce a good W/SW and SW swell favouring both the Mid and South Coasts, building through Saturday ahead of a peak overnight and then easing Sunday.

Middleton should kick back to 3-4ft through the day Saturday and then start easing from 3ft Sunday morning, further into Monday.

Offshore N/NE winds are due all day Saturday with fresher N/NE tending N/NW winds as a tight mid-latitude low approaches from the west.

Mid Coast: Today's swell will ease back tomorrow but we should see 2-3ft waves most of the day with workable N/NW winds for keen surfers.

Friday will be the cleanest but smaller and more around 2ft.

Into the weekend, the new W/SW swell is expected to build to 2-3ft through the day Saturday along with favourable NE winds, easing back from 2ft under those stronger N'ly winds Sunday.

Into next week the South Coast will remain slow until the middle to later part, but the intense mid-latitude low pushing in from the west Monday should kick up a stormy W'ly swell across the Mid Coast to 3ft or so.

This swell will ease into Tuesday as winds back off, while later in the week some good SW groundswell is due. More on this Friday.