South Australian forecast by Craig Brokensha (issued Wednesday April 9th)

Best Days: Keen surfers Friday, beaches Saturday morning, keen surfers Tuesday and Wednesday mornings

Features of the Forecast (tl;dr)

• Moderate sized S/SW groundswell filling in tomorrow (possibly undersized early), easing Fri
• Moderate N/NW tending NW winds tomorrow ahead of an evening change
• Moderate sized W/SW-SW swell building Fri PM, peaking Sat, easing slowly Sun
• Moderate SE winds Fri AM (possibly tending E'ly for a period across the South Coast through the AM) ahead of sea breezes
• N/NE tending weak sea breezy winds Sat (E/NE early on the Mid), moderate N/NE tending N/NW Sun
• Small to moderate sized, inconsistent SW groundswell Mon with light, local offshore winds ahead of weak sea breezes
• Small to mod sized S/SW groundswell Wed, easing Thu
• N/NE tending weak sea breeze winds Wed/Thu/Fri

Recap

Our reinforcing S/SW swell continued to provide solid 4-5ft sets across the South Coast yesterday morning with light winds and clean conditions ahead of relatively weak sea breezes. Monday’s swell across the Mid Coast held in better than expected with clean, glassy 2ft sets through the morning ahead of sea breezes.

Today, the swell is easing but cleaner down South with easing 3-4ft sets, tiny and to 1ft across the Mid Coast.

This week and weekend (Apr 10 - 13)

The coming period looks great with fun pulses of swell under generally favourable local winds for both regions.

The current swell is due to ease further into tomorrow, but we should see an inconsistent, reinforcing S/SW groundswell arriving during the morning, providing 3ft sets across Middleton, generated by a low that formed south-west of us and tracked east-southeast over the last two days.

The Mid Coast will remain tiny and local winds will favour the South Coast all day, moderate from the N-N/NW, tending NW into the afternoon ahead of an evening change as a trough clips us.

This trough will be associated with a healthy frontal progression moving in, under the country over the coming days, with an initial fetch of strong W/SW winds under Western Australia today due to generate some building mid-period W/SW swell energy into Friday.

Slightly stronger winds to our south-west tomorrow, possibly reaching gale-force at times should generate some larger mid-period SW swell for Saturday and Sunday morning.

The progression as a whole looks quite elongated, resulting in a prolonged swell event, with the Mid Coast expected to reach 2ft through Friday afternoon, hold Saturday and then ease Sunday from 1-2ft.

Middleton should build to 3-4ft into Friday afternoon, with Saturday coming in at a stronger 4-5ft, easing back from 3-5ft through Sunday.

Local winds in the wake of tomorrow evening’s trough will revert back to the SE on Friday morning with an outside chance of lighter E winds for a period down South.

The weekend looks much better as high pressure moves east, swinging winds to the N/NE down South during the morning Saturday (E/NE tending N/NE on the Mid) ahead of relatively weak sea breezes.

Moderate N/NE tending N/NW winds on Sunday will favour the South Coast over the Mid as the swell starts to ease with Monday seeing light, local offshore winds and weak sea breezes.

It’s worth noting that on Monday, a long-range, inconsistent SW groundswell is due to be in the water, slowing the easing trend from the weekend.

The swell was generated in our far swell window, south of South Africa earlier this week and as a result the accompanying swell will only be small to moderate in size and very inconsistent.

Middleton looks to be in the 3ft range with tiny waves inside the gulf, smaller into Tuesday under a moderate to fresh N/NE offshore breeze.

Moving into Wednesday and we may see a small S/SW groundswell for the South Coast, generated by strengthening fetches of unfavourably aligned W/NW-NW gales with slow sets to 2-3ft persisting across Middleton. Conditions look to remain clean again under a N’ly flow, similar Thursday and Friday as the swell eases, capping off a great run of surf for the South Coast.

Longer term it looks like we’ll enter a slower period into the end of the week and early the following week, but we’ll have a closer look at this Friday.