Poor weekend, better mid-late next week
Victoria Forecast by Craig Brokensha (issued Friday 10th February)
Best Days: Both coasts Wednesday, Thursday and Friday mornings
Recap
Great conditions yesterday morning with a fresh but easing N'ly wind although there was no swell to speak of.
This morning an onshore wind is blowing along with a tiny weak windswell.
This weekend (Feb 11 - 12)
Moving into tomorrow, the surf is due to remain tiny and early variable winds are expected to freshen from the south-west through the day.
There'll be no waves on the Surf Coast, while the Mornington Peninsula might offer 1-2ft sets early.
Our new W/SW groundswell for Sunday is looking good, with a persistent and broad mid-latitude front moving in from under WA, towards us last night and through today.
This should see surf building to 2-3ft through the late morning at exposed breaks on the Surf Coast with larger 4-6ft sets developing on the Mornington Peninsula into the afternoon.
Conditions will remain average through with a strengthening W/SW breeze as a stronger polar front pushes up and into us. The chance of an early W'ly breeze is unlikely and the swell will be small early anyway around Torquay.
Next week onwards (Feb 13 onwards)
The stronger secondary polar front projecting up towards us through the weekend should produce a moderate sized mid-period S/SW swell for Monday, coming in at 4-5ft across the Surf Coast and 6-8ft on the Mornington Peninsula, with random bigger sets at times.
Conditions will remain poor though with a gusty W/SW-SW breeze. The change of an early W'ly wind around Torquay is very slim and it's not worth driving from Melbourne for.
The swell will ease off through Tuesday as S/SW tending S/SE winds continuing to create poor conditions.
Come Wednesday better offshore winds are due across both coasts, swinging from the N/NE early, NW into the afternoon and holding as a strong low approaches from the south-west. Size wise the Surf Coast will be small and easing from 2ft to maybe 3ft at magnets, with 3-5ft sets on the Mornington Peninsula.
Now as talked about last update some stronger swell is due later in the week and into the weekend, and this will be due to a strong low and front combo.
The low is forecast to form south-west of as, as the remnants of a tropical low drifting south past WA combines with a cold front, resulting in the formation of a severe-gale to storm-force W/SW fetch directly through our south-west swell window on Wednesday.
A moderate sized SW groundswell should result, filling in Thursday and reaching 3-4ft on the Surf Coast and 6ft+ on the Mornington Peninsula. Winds are this stage are looking variable during the morning, with N'ly offshores Friday as the swell eases.
A secondary slow moving polar frontal progression should generate some new swell for next weekend but with less favourable winds. More on this Monday though. Have a great weekend!
Comments
Hi Craigs,
So I was wondering if it would be worth the drive if I was located a little closer than Melbourne during the week? Do you think that a trip from either Point Cook or Werribee would make things more worth while? I'm thinking I can stay with some friends there if that was the case.
Pity about this weekend...should have gone to the Gold Coast during the week, looked so good. Looked like there were some good barrels at Kirras and Snappers.
Yeeeew,
Ralf
Thinking right now Monday morning was NOT well forecasted by you guys or BOM. Should've trusted myself
Hey Ross,
This forecast was updated Friday morning, and things can sometimes change, especially a wind forecast for 3 days time.
It looks like the structure of the front pushing through changed a little, allowing for early offshores on the Surf Coast.
If the charts were looking like they were this morning I would of mentioned a good chance for an early westerly.
PS swell size is on forecast.
May I also quote "Conditions will remain poor though with a gusty W/SW-SW breeze. The chance of an early W'ly wind around Torquay is very slim and it's not worth driving from Melbourne for."
It was mentioned as a possibility.
I drove from Melbourne and it was very worthwhile.
I didn't actually surf, but I got some Rip Curl tees at a great price.
Hey Surfer99
How good are those deals! I got 4 of those rip curl tees for $100.00. Such good value. You should get yourself a board next time you come down and winkis is breaking. Its not the perfect beginner spot, but if you can stand up and go across the face of waves, its perfect when its small and clean. Really good for learning how to do turns and when it gets bigger, you can get barrels too. And there are so many short boards you can get in bigger dimensions. Those hypto boards are a bit over rated these days but they float so much. Or you could even get like a bigger JS monster, that could be perfect.
Something worth thinking about next time you head down to Torquays.
Yeeew
Ralf
Ralph I have a board already. You think I would drive all that way to get authentic Rip Curl tees if I wasn't a surfer? Makes less sense than your driving distance map idea you spud.
Checked it from the cliffs at Jan Juc at 6.30am. Wonky, unorganised 4-5 foot of junk swell with no one in the water. Back in bed 5 minutes later. Some severe over froth on the internet reports this morning........
Hey Craigs,
It seems that in recent times there has been some confusion about the distances you should consider driving to go to Torquay (winkis) and in your numerical number out of 10 rating system that is currently operating.
I've spent all weekend thinking about this and I think I have an idea for how to make your forecast rating system so much better.
So you could have a map of Victoria, and then having winkis as the center point you can have 3 areas that come out from that point that would represent the distance its worth driving for a surf. So the inner area could be green (for its pumping you should go surfing) the orange area (for it could be worth a drive) and a red one (its not good at all). And then if you got the tech guys at swellnet to somehow make it like a live map, so those circles or lines move in or out depending on the weather conditions at the time, hence the driving areas would change. I've drawn a rough idea of what I mean so you can take it to your tech guys and show them. (I tried to post it here but I couldn't figure out how).
But as you can imagine, when winkis is pumping and the green bit of the map is much bigger, and goes further, say from Lorne out to Colac to the Melbourne CBD, meaning that if you lived in a green area, you should go to winkis. Then on the not so good days, the green area is much smaller, but the orange area would show where the areas that if you lived there, it could be worth going to winkis. The red areas on the maps would be that if you lived there, its not worth going at all.
And on days like today the map might be all red or just a little area of orange. You could even get super technical and have it down to the street where the area changes from orange to red. Then guys like Ringmaster could zoom in and see that it's orange (maybe worth a surf) if you live on Sunset Strip, but then red (don't bother) if you live after Duffields road. Not too sure about weather that would be too hard to have the lines follow the streets though. Might be too complicated that way.
And being fed with live data would mean that people have a realistic idea of when its worth going to surf winkis or even bells come to think of it.
I hope you like my idea, and let me know if you want me to email that drawing to you for the swellnet tech guys to see.
Yeeew
Ralf
Haha, good post, had a laugh.
Glad you got a laugh out off this Craig, maybe you should stop taking yourself so seriously and admit when you get a forecast wrong. The report this morning looked like it definitely would've been worth driving down from Melbourne. I had the morning off and I spent it vacuuming my car. If I had have known it was pumping I would've called a few of my friends, who were all training for their indoor cricket final next week, and we would have all gone down together to get some of those bombs. At the very least, you could have mentioned the Rip Curl sale- need some new t-shirts!
Come on Jono123 no need to take the piss.
Surfer 99- It's like they say on that TV add "Finding the perfect super is like finding the perfect wave".
Great idea Ralfs, each colour could relate to the swell size being a certain number of Garys.
Gary would like to also recommend a change to the colouring system: The best zone should be the Orange Zone, which should be re-named the Gary Zone, because it's always pumping in the Gary Zone.