South Arm Surf Forecast by Ben Matson (issued Wednesday 22nd March)

Features of the Forecast (tl;dr)

• Small surf Thurs, building a little Fri and Sat but with fresh E'ly winds at times
• Peak in swell for Sun with winds going light NW, this is the pick of the forecast period
• Small pulses early/mid next week with patchy conditions

Recap

Early Tuesday offered fun clean waves with light winds. It’s now tiny today though still clean with light winds. 

This week (Mar 23 - 24)

Tiny surf and light winds will persist into Thursday, so there’s not much on the menu for surfers. 

A series of overlapping swell trains will start to filter in on Thursday afternoon, with a gradual increase expected over the coming three days. We should start to see some 2ft sets at South Arm beaches by the morning and 2-3ft into the afternoon, though freshening westerly winds will take the sheen off things. So keep your expectations low. 

This weekend (Mar 25 - 26)

The bulk energy from the upcoming Southern Ocean sequence will build further into Saturday, reaching a peak on Sunday, and as it’ll be sourced from a strong though low-latitude fetch (see below), swell direction should be straight SW, allowing an efficient spread into Storm Bay.

However, Saturday will still see average conditions with fresh, easing W’ly tending W/SW winds. There’ll be surfable options around but Sunday is a much better bet with winds expected to swing light NW, as exposed South Arm beaches push up into the 3-4ft+ range. Well worth your time and effort.

Next week (Mar 27 onwards)

Easing swells are expected from Monday onwards with light winds and fun waves, however the latest model runs have added a small polar low flaring up south of WA on Saturday that looks like it’ll just brush the eastern periphery of our S/SW swell window, leading to a kick in new swell on Tuesday morning. No major size is expected but we can expect some 2-3ft sets along the exposed South Arm beaches. 

However, the early outlook is that local winds accompany this pulse though could be iffy under a deepening trough of low pressure that may bring easterlies then southerlies.

There’s a few other systems sitting in the long range charts that should produce swell for the longer term, but in general the pattern looks a little lacklustre for this time of the year, so the general expectation for the second half of next week leading into the weekend is for low swells and average surf conditions. 

I’ll have more in Friday’s update.