South Australian Forecast by Craig Brokensha (issued Wednesday 14th February)

Best Days: Both coasts tomorrow morning, Mid Coast Friday morning, South Coast Saturday morning

Recap

A good increase in SW swell yesterday to 1-1.5ft on the Mid Coast with a couple of sets to 2ft at magnets with favourable winds all day, while the South Coast offered good 2-3ft waves off Middleton, bigger into the afternoon with workable sea breezes.

Today a gusty onshore change has moved through with a semi-stormy 2ft+ of swell on the Mid Coast and choppy 3ft waves off Middleton down South.

We should see winds tending S/SE later in the day on the Mid creating improving conditions with fun 2ft sets.

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This week and weekend (Feb 15 - 18)

Today's change is a little stronger than forecast on Monday, with W/SW gales generating a further kick in size across the South Coast this afternoon in its wake.

This swell should come in around 3-4ft across Middleton tomorrow morning and 2ft on the Mid Coast, but another front passing under us this evening will help produce some reinforcing SW swell for the afternoon, keeping the size steady.

Similar sized waves are due Friday morning down South, but into the afternoon and Saturday morning some new S/SW groundswell is due.

This will be produced by a stalling and deepening polar low south-southwest of Tasmania, generating initial strong to gale-force SW winds in our southern swell window, with better severe-gale to storm-force SW-S/SW winds through tomorrow evening.

We should see a S/SW swell maintaining 3-4ft sets across Middleton Friday from a more S/SW direction, with the best pulse of S'ly groundswell for Saturday morning coming in around 4ft, easing slowly through the day and more noticeably from 3ft Sunday.

The Mid Coast should drop back to 1-1.5ft on Friday and tiny Saturday.

Conditions tomorrow morning look favourable with variable winds on the Mid and a W/NW breeze down South, swinging onshore from the W/SW-SW. Friday will be best on the Mid Coast with a S-S/SE breeze, onshore down South, while Saturday variable winds should tend locally offshore out of the NE ahead of sea breezes.

Sunday looks a touch dicey as the swell eases with light S/SE winds down South, freshening during the day. This will favour the Mid but there'll be hardly any swell at all.

Into next week we're looking at persistent E-SE winds across the South Coast owing to a surface trough deepening and stalling off the southern NSW coast, squeezing a strong high moving in from the Bight.

There are a couple of groundswells due through this period, namely Monday out of the S/SW and then SW Wednesday, but as touched on above, with poor winds. More on this Friday.