Victorian Surf Forecast by Ben Matson (issued Monday 17th November)

Best Days: Tues/Wed: Good small waves in Torquay early morning while winds are light offshore. Wed/Thurs: improving conditions east of Melbourne as winds swing offshore. Fri: small groundswell for the Surf Coast with a brief window of early offshore winds. Sat/Sun/Mon/Tues: small swells for the Surf Coast with brief periods of good winds. 

This week (Nov 18-22)

*Forecaster notes will be very brief this week as Craig’s away. Sorry for any inconvenience*

We’ve had a good storm pattern below the continent over the last few days and this is generating some reasonable energy for Victoria under a mainly fresh westerly airstream. A final front in this series will clip the coast on Tuesday but the morning should offer clean conditions in Torquay for at least a few hours around the dawn patrol, with sets in the 3ft range. 

Lighter winds will return for Wednesday, swinging northerly, and along with a drop in swell will start to open up some options east of Melbourne as surface conditions improve. These conditions should persist through Thursday morning.

Sometime on Thursday a weak front is modelled to clip the coast (without any major strength) and a small long range groundswell will enter Bass Strait, generated near Heard Island over the weekend. However it won’t have a great deal of size: a more prominent SW groundswell generated by a deepening low south of WA today and tomorrow will however push through during Friday, and winds should swing in favour of the Surf Coast for at least the morning (early indications are for sets in the 3ft range).

This weekend (Nov 23 onwards)

Beyond this we’ve got another strong storm track below WA this week that’ll push close to our near swell window on Thursday and Friday, generating a sustained round of moderate W/SW from Saturday thru’ Monday or possibly even Tuesday morning. This should again be enough for a few winds of fun small to moderate waves along the Surf Coast (winds pending). However I’ll detail the finer points later this week.