South Australian Forecast by Craig Brokensha (issued Monday 22nd January)

Best Days: Mid Coast for a fun board surf Wednesday, South Coast Saturday morning, swell magnets Sunday morning

Recap

Poor summer S/SE slop across the South Coast over the weekend and effectively flat conditions across the Mid Coast.

Today we've got a good new long-period SW groundswell breaking across the coast but with average persistent onshore winds down South and a cleaner but tiny 1ft on the Mid.

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This week and weekend (Jan 23 – 28)

Unfortunately as touched on in Friday's update, the outlook for this week on the South Coast is poor. This won't be due to the lack of swell but more so persistent onshore winds.

A stubborn and stationary high in the Bight along with a trough over Victoria will direct persistent onshore SE-S/SE winds across the region until around Friday.

We'll see today's swell ease temporarily into tomorrow morning ahead of a new SW groundswell later in the day, peaking Wednesday with a touch more west in it than today's swell.

The swell is being generated by a mid-latitude frontal progression that's currently south of WA and our far West.

The progression is slightly weaker but further north than the weekend's and we should see the Mid Coast pulsing to 1-1.5ft on Wednesday with the favourable parts of the tide and 3-4ft off Middleton.

The easing trend will be slowed into the end of the week by a secondary much weaker trailing front moving in on the back of the initial swell producing system.

The Mid Coast looks to hold 1ft through Thursday, fading from a similar size Friday morning.

The South Coast should ease back from the 3ft range Thursday morning, 2-3ft Friday.

Now, coming back to those winds, and the Mid Coast will be cleanest through this period, but on Friday there's a chance winds tend lighter E'ly, we'll have to confirm this on Wednesday though.

Moving into the weekend, we will see winds swing offshore from the NE across the South Coast with small easing 2ft waves off Middleton. Sunday morning looks clean again but tiny ahead of a S'ly change. More on this Wednesday.