Victoria Surf Forecast by Ben Matson (issued Friday 20th May)

Best Days: Sat/Sun: open beaches under a freshening northerly breeze and dropping swell. Mon/Tues: OK waves on the Surf Coast under a westerly breeze. Wed: open beaches east of Melbourne as the swell drops. Thurs/Fri: chance for a fun W/SW swell, but winds are tricky.

Recap: Small surf in Torquay Thursday morning with freshening W/NW winds ahead of a building trend throughout the day and a gusty W tending W/SW change. Winds have straightened back up to the NW this morning, and the Surf Coast is pumping with solid 4-6ft surf. Wave heights are much bigger east of Melbourne but the only protected options are inside Western Port.

This weekend (May 21st - 22nd)

No changes to the weekend forecast. 

Light northerly winds on Saturday morning will freshen into the afternoon as a dominant high pressure system moves slowly across the region. A series of fronts will back up in the Bight on Sunday, tightening the pressure gradient across the Victorian coast and strengthening these northerlies considerably for the second half of the weekend.

Only one new swell is expected to arrive over the weekend (overnight Saturday), and it’s expected to be insignificant enough to not warrant too much attention. For the most part you’ll be surfing leftover groundswell from today, which is expected to drop to around 3ft along the Surf Coast on Saturday morning, before easing further over the weekend - down to 2-3ft into the afternoon then just 1-2ft on Sunday. 

The surf will be bigger at open beaches east of Melbourne; easing from 4-6ft to 3-5ft throughout Saturday, then a very inconsistent 3-4ft down to 2-3ft on Sunday. But conditions should be great here under the northerly breeze - if you have any flexibility, aim for Saturday over Sunday as the former will be bigger, and the latter will become quite blowy as winds eventually strengthn and veer NW late in the day. 

But both days - especially the mornings - should be worthwhile at many open beaches. 

Next week (May 23rd onwards)

We’ve got another windy week of waves ahead. Though, as alluded to on Wednesday, I’m still lukewarm about the prospects of any notable size, due to a poorly consolidated storm track.

A broad ridge (surface and upper) across the eastern states this weekend will force a series of approaching fronts to stall in the Bight, developing several centres of low pressure. 

The primary low is expected to drop towards Antarctica, but whilst individual synoptic snapshots look promising, the south-eastern track of this low and its narrow fetch width means its swell potential is low. We'll see some SW energy from this but I'm not confident for any major size.

The other main region of activity around this time will be through the northern Bight. Unfortunately, this is outside of Victoria’s swell window; we’ll see some frontal activity drop south into the western portion of the window around Sunday but by then it’ll be too little, too late - and still too westerly in direction for the Surf Coast, which’ll be the only coast coping with Monday’s gusty westerly airstream. 

Right now the models are suggesting a steady increase in surf size throughout Monday towards a peak late afternoon or early Tuesday morning, with size around the 3ft mark.

By and large I think this is probably a little generous - there’ll be several swell trains in the water (short range W’ly swell, small SW swell from the polar low, plus some distant W/SW swell from an earlier incarnation of the same system SW of WA today) - I’d be thinking more around the 2-3ft mark at best, and very inconsistent. So, there’ll be waves in Torquay building Monday and holding Tuesday but I wouldn’t hold your breath for anything amazing. 

East of Melbourne, the open beaches will be much bigger (maybe up to twice the size) but heavily wind affected. And I’m doubtful there’ll be quite enough size for Western Port.

On Tuesday a new high pressure ridge will move in from the west, causing winds to eased and tend NW, before a northerly trend freshens on Wednesday with the approach of another front. Surf size will fall away throughout this period, favouring the open beaches, mainly those east of Melbourne (4-5ft Wednesday). There should still be some clean 2ft+ sets west of Melbourne too, maybe a little bigger on the Bellarine Peninsula. 

The second half of the week looks really interesting, from a technical point of view. The fetch trailing our approaching mid-week front doesn’t look very impressive - I’d ordinarily dismiss it as a major source of new swell because of its poor consolidation and SE track through the swell window (almost perpendicular to the great circle paths).

However - the pre-frontal NW fetch is of interest. Now, looking at a standard weather chart (see below) and it suggests this fetch isn’t aimed directly towards the coast. So under any normal circumstances you’d never consider it a swell source for Victoria.

But, I’ve seen on many occasions good swells result from these fetches, which are actually not aligned quite as far away from the Great Circle paths as you’d think. Couple this in with a strong westward motion on a strengthening surface wind field (with potentially 50-60kts at its core), and there’s a promising captured fetch scenario that could play out.

Bottom line is: we may see some unusual W/SW swell from this system around Thursday. For now I’ll peg the Surf Coast as a possible 2-3ft+ by the afternoon with much bigger waves east of Melbourne, before easing on Friday. But local winds are too far out to have any confidence, so let’s wait and see what happens.

Have a great weekend!