South Australian Surf Forecast by Ben Matson (issued Wednesday 19th October)

Features of the Forecast (tl;dr)

• Tiny conditions on the Mid for Thurs, Fri, Sat
• Slowly building size down south but generally onshore
• Small new groundswell for the Mid on Sun, with strengthening offshore winds - aim for a late session
• Low surf potential for next week due to small swells and tricky winds 

Recap

The surfs been pretty small on the Mid, but it’s been a nice run down south with easing 3ft sets on Tuesday and offshore winds, smaller today but equally clean early on ahead of a developing southerly associated with an inland low pressure system.

Tiny surf on the Mid this arvo

This week (Oct 20 - 21)

We’ve got a couple of small swells inbound over the next few days; a minor bump in size for Thursday and a slightly bigger pulse Friday. However, they won’t favour the Mid Coast due to a strong southerly component in the swell direction.

Unfortunately, local winds aren’t looking good for Victor. 

We’ll see persistent SE breeze on Thursday swing SW on Friday as the low drifts to the east. There’s a chance for pockets of light variable winds, but the best we can hope for would be brief windows of lumpy surf (Friday AM the best chance of this) - it’s not worth getting too excited about. For the record, size should lift to 2ft+ down south on Thursday, a little more on Friday with 3ft+ sets at Middleton, bigger at exposed spots 

On the Mid Coast, we won’t see much size from the new energy so keep your expectations low as it’ll be a grovel at best. 

This weekend (Oct 22 - 23)

Saturday looks small and average with easing swells and lingering onshore winds. A small ordinary session down south is about the best you’ll get.

Sunday’s got some potential on the cards, with a new W/SW swell expected to make landfall in the morning, generated by a strong front SW of WA at the moment. This looks nicely aligned for the Mid’s swell window, however surface wind speeds aren’t terribly strong and the front does most of its work a long way from our region. So, the will probably cap the afternoon’s size to 2ft along the Mid's swell magnet reefs (with bigger 2-3ft sets along the South Coast). Bear in mind: it'll be extremely inconistent at times. 

Sunday’s curveball will be in the form of local E/SE winds, which are expected to strengthen n response to a developing surface trough over Victoria. This will wipe out surface condition down south but should keep conditions nice and clean along the Mid. So, the afternoon session is shaping up to be pretty fun at this stage with some inconsistent lines of new energy.

Next week (Oct 25 onwards)

Local winds look super tricky for next week in the wake of the inland low pressure trough (over Vic), so it’s hard to be confident on local conditions.

Either way, we’ll see easing swells from Sunday afternoon offering small options on the Mid Coast. I suspect it’ll be a few days before things improve down south, in fact there’s also the chance for punchy local SE wind swells thanks to strong to gale force winds exiting western Bass Strait (size will depend on the eventual fetch alignment). 

Unfortunately, this slow moving surface trough looks like it’ll steer Southern Ocean storm track away from our primary swell window, resulting in low SW groundswell energy for most of next week. There’s a suggestion that this pattern may break down around the following weekend (Sunday 30th) but for now there’s not much on the cards from this swell window.

See you Friday!