South Australian forecast by Craig Brokensha (issued Friday February 7th)

Best Days: Later this afternoon/evening Mid Coast, tomorrow Mid Coast for the keen

Features of the Forecast (tl;dr)

• Mod-large sized SW groundswell for later today easing tomorrow with strong SE-S/SE winds
• Easing swell Sun with mod-fresh SE-S/SE winds, strengthening into the PM
• Moderate sized S/SE windswell in the mix for the weekend, easing Mon
• Moderate E/SE-E winds Mon AM ahead of sea breezes
• Small to tiny Tue with mod-fresh NE-N/NE winds, E/SE into the PM

Recap

Our new mix of W/SW-SW swells filled in nicely yesterday with inconsistent 1-2ft waves on the dropping tide pulsing to 2ft+ with the incoming across the Mid Coast while the South Coast was a solid 3-4ft across Middleton with a window of E/NE winds before sea breezes kicked in.

Today the swell is back to a tiny 1-1.5ft inside the gulf with poor, onshore surf on the South Coast.

This weekend and next week (Feb 8 - 14)

The coming period will be poor for the South Coast, only swinging offshore once all the local windswell fades away.

What we’re seeing synoptically is a trough moving through, bringing today’s S’ly winds and this will stall and even retro-grade a little around Victoria as high pressure slides in from the west below us.

The interaction between the trough and high will bring strengthening S/SE winds through the weekend and building levels of S/SE windswell mixed in with our new SW groundswell that’s due later today.

Coming back to this briefly and there’s no change to the timing or expected size, with a late increase in size due today across both coasts. 

As touched on through the week, this swell was generated by the remnants of Tropical Cyclone Elvis drifting south-east from around Madagascar before being absorbed into the westerly storm track.

A rapidly deepening low produced a great fetch of sever-gale to storm-force W/SW winds before weakening while tracking slowly towards us the past couple of days.

The Mid Coast may reach 1-2ft later today and ease from a similar size tomorrow on the favourable parts of the tide, tiny Sunday.

Middleton should see 4-6ft waves on dark today and tomorrow morning before easing into the afternoon, smaller Sunday.

Fresh to strong S/SE-SE winds tomorrow morning will strengthen into the afternoon out of the S/SE with Sunday seeing winds back off to the moderate to possibly fresh strength across the South Coast, strong into the afternoon out of the S/SE again.

This will be along with a junky 3-4ft of S/SE windswell, easing Monday as winds ease and tend more E/SE through the morning.

It won’t be until Tuesday that a true offshore is expected, moderate to fresh N/NE-NE but with easing levels of S/SE windswell from 1-2ft or so.

The Mid Coast will become tiny to flat from Sunday. 

Into the rest of next week there’s nothing major due until Friday when a deepening mid-latitude low moving in from the west brings with it a stormy increase in swell for the Mid Coast Thursday afternoon/evening and then some localised mid-period SW swell Friday.

Unfortunately a high will follow the low, bringing poor S/SW tending S/SE winds, but more on this Monday. Have a great weekend!