Victoria Forecast by Craig Brokensha (issued Monday 10th September)

Best Days: Tuesday, Wednesday afternoon and Thursday keen surfers Surf Coast, Surf Coast Friday onwards

Recap

Fun clean waves in the 2-3ft range across the Surf Coast all weekend, though fairly inconsistent at times, while to the east there was more size but average conditions.

Today, our moderate to large W/SW groundswell is filling in, with pumping waves on the Surf Coast to 4-6ft on the magnets, larger to the east and best in protected spots with a W/NW breeze. We should see the swell peaking through the afternoon as winds remain generally favourable for protected spots.

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This week and weekend (Sep 11 - 16)

Today's strong long-period W/SW groundswell will ease off fairly steadily through tomorrow, slowed just a touch by a reinforcing SW groundswell produced on the backside of the storm that generated it.

A polar fetch of south-east tracking severe-gale W'ly winds were generated in our south-western swell window, with the swell arriving early tomorrow morning.

We should see good easing sets from 4ft on the Surf Coast and still large 6ft+ sets on the Mornington Peninsula, smaller and more manageable into the afternoon. Conditions will be great for more exposed spots with a moderate to fresh N'ly persisting all day to the east of Melbourne, tending N/NW across the Surf Coast.

Wednesday will start smaller and slower and a mid-latitude front that's currently approaching the south coast of WA will ride too high to generate any swell for us until it dips south-east in a much weaker form as it drifts south-east across us on Wednesday morning.

We'll see a burst of strong to sub-gale-force W/SW winds through our western swell window and it's unlikely to generate much in the way of swell for the Surf Coast, with a kick from 2ft during the morning to 2-3ft possibly later (under model expectations), with building 4-5ft sets to the east.

A W/NW breeze will keep the Surf Coast clean, but with the lack of size and power it won't be great.

A drop in size should be seen through Thursday morning with persistent NW winds but some good new W/SW groundswell should be seen into the afternoon and more so Friday ahead of a larger increase on Saturday.

These swells will originate from a broad and elongated frontal progression pushing in from the south-east Indian Ocean through this week, with an initial fetch of W'ly gales tending less favourable from the W/NW on approach Wednesday, generating a new W'ly groundswell for later Thursday and more so Friday to 3ft+ on the Surf Coast magnets and 5-6ft to the east.

A stronger and better aligned W/SW groundswell should then build through the afternoon generated by a more southerly positioned and better aligned fetch of gale to near-severe-gale W/SW winds on top an active sea state.

A moderate to large long-period W/SW groundswell will result, building later Friday likely to at least 4ft by dark on the Surf Coast, 6ft+ to the east and peaking Saturday morning to 4-5ft+ and 6-8ft respectively.

This swell looks to be overridden by an even larger swell into the late afternoon and Sunday though as a third front piggy-backing on top of all this activity projects a fetch of severe-gale W/SW winds directly south-west of us on Friday and Saturday.

The models are slightly divergent on this system, but we're looking at a larger swell with winds form the western quadrant, but more on this and follow up swells on Wednesday.