South Australian Surf Forecast by Ben Matson (issued Friday 24th March)

Features of the Forecast (tl;dr)

• No major surf expected on the Mid throughout the forecast period
• Building surf down Sat with generally onshore winds
• Light winds Sun AM tending E/NE with a strong peak in swell, easing Mon with early light winds
• W'y winds redeveloping Tues/Wed/Thurs with small/mod swells
• Renewal of strong surf for the South Coast Fri/Sat/Sun

Recap

Onshore winds have maintained poor conditions at Victor, and the swell’s been pretty small on the Mid (see Triggs below, lunchtime today).

This weekend (Mar 25 - 26)

Onshore winds will persist out of the SE on Saturday so Victor’s looking to be a write-off. Tiny surf will persist on the Mid but it really won’t be big enough to get excited. 

Building swells are expected regionally over the weekend, though they’ll be sourced from a polar low sequence below the continent, so the swell direction will be out of the S/SW, which is no good for the Mid due to the shadowing effects of Kangaroo Island. As such, I’m not expecting much more than a stray 0.5-1ft wave in the gulf, much as we’ve seen today.

However, this swell direction is ideal for the South Coast, and the good news for Sunday is that we’ll see a peak in energy as local winds swing around to the E/NE as a trough builds through the Bight. There’ll still be some leftover wobbles from Saturday’s winds but conditions should improve slowly through the day. Size should reach 3-5ft across the Middleton stretch and there’ll be options across Chiton too.

Next week (Mar 27 onwards)

Monday morning’s also looking good for a surf, with early light winds preceding an afternoon southerly breeze that’ll create unwelcome lumps and bumps after lunch. Victor should have fun surf, easing from 3-4ft to 2-3ft but make it early before the onshore kicks in.

No new swell is expected regionally so we’ll see a continuation of tiny surf along the Mid.

W/SW winds are then expected to redevelop through Tuesday and persist for the much of rest of the week, maintaining below-average conditions down south with small residual swells. A small polar low developing SW of Tasmania over the weekend has been downgraded a little in the last few runs - and it's expected to flare up right on the eastern periphery of Victor’s swell window (see below) - but it should provide a small reinforcement in wave heights through Tues/Wed.

The next swell sequence is expected to arrive on Friday, thanks to a strong polar low sequence forming east of Heard Island from Tuesday onwards. This system is expected to stall in its eastward track (that’s a good thing!), and size should build through Friday, holding Sat/Sun with embedded pulses pushing 3-5ft at Victor, though the alignment of this system doesn’t look great for the Mid so we’ll probably see only 1ft surf in the gulf. 

Have a great weekend, see you Monday!