Victoria Surf Forecast by Ben Matson (issued Monday 23rd May)

Best Days: Tuesday: OK, mainly small surf in Torquay with reasonable winds. Thursday: good combo of building swells on the Surf Coast, with early offshores. 

Recap: Solid, clean but easing surf on Saturday, which became much smaller through Sunday as northerly winds freshened both days. Wave heights have been very small all day today, with gusty NW winds across the coast. The current trace from the Cape Sorell buoy shows a classic groundswell period signature arriving later this morning, but becoming contaminated with windswell (not long after average wind speeds increased 25kts). We’re only now just starting to see the first new signs of this swell, with 2ft sets observed on the Torquay surfcam - somewhat swallowed up by the early afternoon high tide - so there should be an improvement later today as the tide drops and the swell builds (though not a great deal more size).

This week (May 24th - 27th)

I’m not expecting anything amazing for the next few days.

Local winds are expected to veer slowly back to the W/NW early Tuesday morning, so conditions should be fine across the Surf Coast, however as described in much of last week’s forecaster notes, the contributing weather systems to the current (and short term) swell energy is a poorly consolidated group of fetches in the Southern Ocean.

The main fetch rode up high through the Bight this morning and is/was consequently very west in direction, and the remaining regions of our swell window just haven’t been working together in the right way to generate a meaningful swell event. Most of the current size at the Cape Sorell buoy is windswell (though it’s hard to distinguish just how much) so I can’t find any reason to change the outlook for Tuesday and Wednesday.

As such I still think the models are overcalling surf heights for the next few days. I think we’ll be lucky to see inconsistent 2-3ft waves at Torquay on Tuesday (with W/NW winds), easing slowly in size on Wednesday as winds veer to the N/NW and regain strength.

East of Melbourne it’ll be a lot bigger, but even more wind affected, and there won’t be quite enough size for Western Port to offer anything amazing. So give the surf a miss over there for a few days.

Thursday still looks really interesting for the Victorian coast. And, we’ve had a slight upgrade since Friday’s notes were prepared.

Last week I mentioned the possibility for an ‘unusual’ W/NW swell event originating from a pre-frontal NW airstream developing just SW of West Oz today. The good news is that this swell is still on target; the better news is that the trailing front has been strengthened in the latest model runs. It’s not ideally positioned for Victoria - a low is expected to form along the frontal boundary tomorrow (south of WA) and then slip slowly southwards, still at some distance form the coast - but despite the unfavourable storm track, we are looking at a reasonable fetch developing in the swell window for 24-30 hours. And it's expected to display very strong winds too.

The funky W/NW swell (which will actually arrive from the W or W/SW in Victorian waters) is expected to push through overnight Wednesday, with slightly longer period W/SW groundswell from the primary low arriving on Thursday morning (see chart to the right), building throughout the day.

The upshot of this is that we’re probably looking at decent 3-4ft waves building across most of the Surf Coast on Thursday, possibly some bigger bombs at the more reliable reefs (i.e. 3-5ft). This swell is expected to reach a peak into the afternoon so don’t be surprised if the morning is slightly undersized. However, owing to the strong west component in the swell direction, set waves will be rather inconsistent (a little more than usual).

Much bigger waves will be present east of Melbourne (6ft, maybe 6-8ft) by late in the day, and Western Port should have some fun clean surf in the 3ft range on the more favourable parts of the afternoon tide. 

As for local winds - it looks like we’ll be under the influence of a weak troughy pattern - with a small surface low just south of Tasmania - so moderate SW winds are likely throughout the day. I am however expecting three or four hours of light W/NW winds across the Surf Coast in the morning.

And then to finish the week, we should see a combination of light variable winds across all coasts on Friday, and a very slow easing in the size department. Early sets could still occasionally top 3-4ft in Torquay but it’ll be down to 2-3ft by the afternoon. Expect 5-6ft surf at open beaches east of Melbourne ahead of the easing trend.

This weekend (Saturday 28th - Sunday 29th)

Computer models are maintaining moderate swell activity across the region all weekend, but I reckon they’re being a little optimistic. 

Main reason being is that the swell source for the weekend is a series of distant storms (way out near Heard Island) over the coming days, which aren’t quite big or strong enough to warrant any major size, given the travel distance. 

One of these systems will track a moderate front through the northern Bight around Thursday or Friday but it looks like it’ll be steered just not of our swell window. So any swell we see from it will be have to spread back towards our region, which reduces the size potential. 

As such I’m going to ease back the model estimates for 3ft Torquay both mornings back to a very inconsistent 2ft, maybe 2-3ft, and limited to exposed beaches and other swell magnets. Most locations will be considerably smaller, and overall we may also see a slight decline from Saturday into Sunday.

East of Melbourne should be much bigger (4-5ft open beaches) but winds are a little suss right now - probably out of the western quadrant both days.

Let’s take a better look at this on Wednesday.

Next week (Monday 30th onwards)

No major systems on the boil for next week at this stage, but that being said, we are expecting a continuing active Southern Ocean pattern or fronts and lows that should maintain plenty of surfable action right through next week. No major size is likely - at this stage - but we should see more than a few rideable days on the Surf Coast.