Victoria Forecast by Craig Brokensha (issued Monday 13th March)

Best Days: Wednesday east of Melbourne, Thursday morning, possibly early Saturday Surf Coast

Recap

Light winds Saturday morning provided clean conditions across both coasts with a small leftover 1-2ft of swell on the Surf Coast and 3ft on the Mornington Peninsula.

Sunday started small and onshore, but a new inconsistent SW groundswell filled in through the afternoon, but with no decent quality. Today the swell backed off ahead of another better pulse due into this afternoon and tomorrow, but conditions are poor with a fresh and gusty onshore breeze.

This week (Mar 15 - 18)

This afternoon's new SW groundswell was generated late last week by a strong pre-frontal fetch of W/NW gales under WA. A better aligned post-frontal fetch on the other side of the front should generate a better SW groundswell pulse for tomorrow, offering 3ft to occasionally 4ft sets at exposed breaks on the Surf Coast and 5-6ft+ waves on the Mornington Peninsula.

Unfortunately conditions will be a complete mess with a strengthening onshore E/SE breeze tomorrow, kicking up a junky SE windswell across the Surf Coast which should reach a solid 3-5ft later in the day across exposed breaks.

Both the windswell and groundswell are due to ease back through Wednesday as the inland surface trough linked to the setup starts to break down.

This will result in winds tending from a fresh to strong E'ly, more E/NE through the morning ahead of E/SE sea breezes.

The Surf Coast will still be a total mess, but dropping quickly from the 3-4ft range out of the SE, with easing peaky 4-5ft sets east of Melbourne. The combination of SW and SE swell with improving winds could provide some interesting options across selected regions!

Thursday will be the cleanest and best east of Melbourne with the most size as winds swing more N'ly and the surf eases from a small 2ft on the Surf Coast and 3-4ft on the Mornington Peninsula.

Friday morning may be clean early on the Surf Coast with a W/NW breeze, but a strong and gusty SW change is due through the morning. With no real size left across the Surf Coast it will be a good lay day.

This weekend onwards (Mar 19 onwards)

Starting from Friday but more so into the weekend we've got some fun SW swell on the cards as a series of relatively weak but back to back frontal systems fire up through our south-western swell window.

The first frontal system will push up towards us from the south-west of WA, generating winds in the strong to gale-force range. This will then be followed by a secondary system pushing in over the top resulting in two pulses of fun SW groundswell.

The first should arrive later Friday but more so Saturday morning, with the secondary pulse for Saturday afternoon, both easing Sunday.

Size wise, the Surf Coast should kick to 3-4ft through Saturday with 6ft+ sets on the Mornington Peninsula, easing back from a slightly smaller size Sunday.

Besides a possible early W/NW breeze Saturday morning, conditions are looking poor as a S/SW change moves through, swinging more E/SE into Sunday, but we'll have another look at this Wednesday.