South Australian Surf Forecast by Craig Brokensha (issued Wednesday February 7th)

Best Days: Sunday morning South Coast, Monday morning South Coast, Tuesday morning South Coast

Features of the Forecast (tl;dr)

• Small, weak swells with onshore winds to end the week
• Large S/SW groundswell building Sat, peaking later with gusty SE tending S/SE winds
• Rapidly easing swell Sun with E/NE-NE tending SE winds
• Small, fadin surf Mon with N tending S winds
• Strong N/NW tending SW winds Tue with a new swell for the PM

Recap

Tiny little windswell waves have persisted across the Mid Coast yesterday and today, pushing to 1ft offering novelty runners for the desperate and good surf for beginners.

The South Coast has been bumpy and onshore, still 3ft yesterday but back to a small 2ft today.

This week and weekend (Feb 8 - 11)

There's nothing significant due into the end of the week with small levels of weak S/SE windswell and background S/SW swell with winds due to shift E/SE-E tomorrow morning though with 1-2ft surf down South.

Friday looks even smaller with moderate to fresh S/SE-SE winds, a lay day.

We then look to the weekend and our large pulse of S/SW groundswell that's due to fill in on Saturday.

On Monday the models diverged regarding the strength of the polar low forming to the south-west of us over the coming days, but EC has come to the party and we're looking at a beefy swell producer.

The catalyst for the low will be the remnants of another tropical low in the Indian Ocean, drifting south-east into the westerly storm track, deepening significantly south-west of us.

A fetch of severe-gale to storm-force W/SW-SW winds will be generated through our southern swell window tomorrow, pushing further east and under Tasmania through Friday.

This should produce a large spike of S/SW groundswell for Saturday, though not to the size of last weekend, with the low forming a little less favourable in the swell window.

Building surf to 5-6ft is due through the late afternoon but with gusty SE tending S/SE winds, tiny on the Mid Coast and only to 1ft or so.

Sunday should be cleaner with an E/NE-NE breeze in the morning along with some easing S/SE windswell but the swell will drop quickly, down from 3-4ft in the morning.

Monday will be good across the magnets with a N'ly offshore but smaller, fading 2ft of swell.

Moving into Tuesday afternoon and Wednesday, some good mid-period S/SW swell is due across the state, but besides offshore N/NW winds ahead of the swell Tuesday morning, a S/SW change will spoil any new energy from the afternoon through the rest of the week. More on this Friday.