South Australian Surf Forecast by Ben Matson (issued Wednesday 13th March)

Best Days: Thurs/Fri: fun easing, then reinforcing surf with light winds at most coasts, small on the Mid but fun, better down south. Sat/Sun: becoming small on the Mid so best down south in the mornings whilst winds are light. Best Sat. Next week: extended period of small pulsey long range groundswells, though tricky winds for Victor (clean on the Mid though only small surf). 

Recap: Developing onshore winds on Tuesday created choppy conditions but surf size built through the day with the arrival of a new groundswell. This created large surf this morning, up to 6ft+ at exposed at exposed spots down south and 2-3ft along the Mid Coast. Winds were light offshore early but have swing into a light to moderate afternoon sea breeze that’s not causing too many problems across either coast.

Trigs this morning, and this afternoon - still a few shoulder to head high sets

This week (Mar 14 - 15)

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We’ve got a light pressure pattern across the coast for the rest of the week, so the mornings are looking clean-ish with light variable winds ahead of moderate to fresh afternoon sea breezes. 

Today’s swell is already easing steadily and will lose a little more size overnight into Thursday, where we should see early, inconsistent 3ft+ sets ease to 2-3ft at Middleton, with bigger surf at Goolwa, Waits and Parsons. 

Along the Mid Coast, surf size will lose a little more size from today, and it’ll become more tidally dependent but there should be inconsistent 2ft sets on offer from time to time. Probably not worth getting too excited about though, as it'll be much less consistent than today. 

A small cut-off low approaching from the west is expected to renew swell into Friday, though the models have slightly weakened it since Monday’s notes were prepared. We should see the South Coast rebuild to an inconsistent 3ft across the Middleton stretch (again, bigger at exposed spots), with the Mid Coast probably just seeing a few more sets in the 2ft+ range on the afternoon tide. Expect slightly smaller surf through the morning though, and long breaks between the bigger waves.
 
This weekend (Mar 16 - 17)

The weekend outlook is fairly steady from a swell point of view - mainly down, from whatever reinforcement we pick up on Friday. 

No real synoptic wind is expected on Saturday, so we should see early light E’ly winds in the gulf tending NE at Victor, though afternoon sea breezes will swing this around to the S and SE respectively after lunch. Sunday will see a gradually freshening SE breeze as a high develops to the south, which will create a few problems at Victor Harbor, though early morning should be OK.

The Mid Coast usually does reasonably well on the backside of long period groundswell events, and although it’ll be small in size we should see small rideable surf all day in the 1-2ft range on Saturday, easing to 1-1.5ft on Sunday. 

At Victor, the easing trend will be best capitalised on Saturday with the light morning winds, and 2-3ft surf at Middleton, a foot or more bigger at exposed spots. Expect smaller surf into Sunday with deteriorating conditions throughout the day (though light winds are possible early). 

Next week (Mar 18 onwards)


A broad ridge of high pressure will bring about an extended period of E’ly through S’ly winds for the region next week, Initially, wind strengths will be light but it looks like there’ll be a couple of poor quality days at Victor to work around. However we’ll see good conditions across the Mid Coast for the most part. 

As for surf, a seemingly endless supply of reasonably strong Southern Ocean lows will move track parallel to the ice shelf all week, supplying pulsey groundswell for our region throughout the medium to longer term period.

Size wise we’re looking at intermittent 2ft, almost 2-3ft surf across the Middleton stretch all week, and embedded pulses within this pattern (currently late Mon/Tues, Fri and Sun) should punch another foot or so higher than this (late next week could be even higher again).

We’ll be looking towards these embedded pulses for swell potential along the Mid Coast, which will otherwise hover at an inconsistent foot or so of background swell all week. These peak days should push the 1-2ft mark, and the latter part of the week has potential for a little more size too, though as these swells will be generated from distant regions of the swell window, they’l be flukey and inconsistent. 

More on this in Friday’s update.