Victoria Forecast by Ben Matson (issued Monday 25th June)

Best Days: Tues: small clean easing swells in Torquay, solid and improving (though also easing) east of Melbourne. Wed/Thurs: small/mod and clean east of Melbourne. Sat/Sun: slowly building swells with windy conditions.

Recap: Starting off small early Saturday (as expected) the first of several weekend groundswell built across the coast into Saturday afternoon and then peaked through Sunday, even holding into this morning before slowly beginning to ease this afternoon. Torquay managed 3-5ft sets Sun/Mon with mainly good winds, surf size was considerably larger east of Melbourne though generally wind affected. 

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This week (Jun 26 - 29)

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Note: Today’s Forecaster Notes will be brief, as Craig is away on annual leave. Also, these Forecaster Notes will be updated Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays for the next few weeks.

We’ve got a relatively quiet week of surf ahead with mainly variable conditions expected until Friday, when a series of advancing fronts will strengthen a NW flow across the region. Prior to then, winds will remain light and variable Tuesday, tending E’ly Wednesday then N’ly Thursday.

As for surf, today’s strong groundswell will abate steadily into Tuesday before bottoming out into Wednesday. There’ll be small clean waves west of Melbourne Tuesday morning, but Wednesday and Thursday look better suited the open beaches east of Melbourne.  

A cut off low in the Bight over the coming days has been downgraded over the last few model runs, and because the low will ride reasonably high in the Bight, it’ll create a W’ly swell for Friday that won’t have enough size to offer anything worthwhile in Torquay - which will be the only coast workable under strengthening NW winds. As such, expect poor options to finish the working week. 

This weekend (June 30 - July 1)

This week's cut-off low won’t provide much surfing opportunities for us, but a series of secondary fronts trailing behind will build W/SW tending SW swells over the weekend. Winds will remain fresh out of the W/NW Saturday, easing a little into Sunday, so the Surf Coast will offer the best waves both days, with choppy conditions expected east of Melbourne.

Unfortunately, though the synoptic chart looks pretty active from about Thursday onwards, there's no great consolidation between what's essentially an ad-hoc progression of surface lows and fronts. Based on current model guidance, this significantly downplays the prospects of quality swell generation.

At this stage we’re looking at a slow building trend from 2ft to 2-3ft on Saturday and perhaps a few bigger waves in the 3ft+ range on Sunday. I’m not expecting any major quality but there won’t be much on offer elsewhere in the state. 

Next week (July 2 onwards)

An active Southern Ocean storm track looks like generating a couple of solid swells for our coast mid-late next week and into the weekend, though early next week will see light winds and steadily easing swells from this weekend. It’s still early days though so let’s take a closer look Wednesday.