South Australian Forecast by Craig Brokensha (issued Wednesday March 27th)

Best Days: South Coast tomorrow morning, Friday morning, Saturday, early Sunday

Features of the Forecast (tl;dr)

• Easing SW swell tomorrow with E/NE tending S/SE winds
• Smaller early Fri AM with N/NE winds ahead of sea breezes
• Small, inconsistent mid-period SW swell for Fri PM, easing Sat AM
• Light N winds Sat AM ahead of weak sea breezes, variable W/NW Sun AM, tending S late AM
• Smaller Mon with variable tending S winds
• Possible strong S/SW winds on Tue with some localised S windswell, mod-fresh S Wed
• Tiny W/SW swell for early-mid next week

Recap

Monday afternoon's strong pulse of new S/SW groundswell held well into yesterday morning with clean 5-6ft waves across Middleton and some bigger ones on the deepwater reefs under a light offshore wind. Sea breezes added bumps into the afternoon. Today the swell is easing from 3-4ft but with less than ideal winds and conditions.

The Mid Coast saw 1ft surf yesterday, holding a similar size today with the rare bigger one in the mix.

This week and weekend (Mar 28 - 31)

Moving into the end of the week, and the current swell will continue to ease with 2-3ft sets across Middleton tomorrow morning, backing off further to 2ft on Friday morning.

Winds look E/NE tomorrow morning creating OK conditions ahead of sea breezes, while Friday should see better N/NE winds in the morning, favouring the magnets.

Into the afternoon Friday, some inconsistent mid-period SW swell is due, generated by a good but relatively weak fetch of strong W/NW winds, east of the Heard Island region earlier this week.

This should produce a slight increase to 2ft to occasionally 3ft across Middleton into the afternoon, easing from a similar size Saturday morning.

Another, flukey pulse of S/SW swell is showing for Saturday afternoon and Sunday morning, generated by poorly aligned gale-force NW winds projecting towards the polar shelf over the coming days.

I wouldn't expect much size from this source, likely only coming in at 2ft+ across Middleton through the afternoon and Sunday morning, easing into the afternoon and Monday.

Local winds look favourable and offshore from the N'th on Saturday morning ahead of relatively weak sea breezes, variable W-W/NW on Sunday morning, shifting S'ly late morning as a trough moves through.

Variable winds are likely again Monday morning but with fading 1-2ft sets across Middleton.

From Tuesday the wind outlook is tricky thanks to divergence regarding a deepening trough come mid-latitude low moving in from the west during the week. ECMWF looks poor with strong S/SW winds developing around the western flank of the low as it sits east of us, weaker but persisting Wednesday, weaker again Thursday.

We may see winds shift back to the N/NW next Friday and swell wise, a series of strong but not overly significant polar fronts should generate some fun sized mid-period S/SW energy. We'll have a closer look at this outlook on Friday though when the models will hopefully be more in alignment.