Victoria Forecast by Craig Brokensha (issued Wednesday 17th October)

Best Days: Surf Coast Thursday, exposed beaches Friday morning, both coasts Sunday morning and Monday

Recap

Tiny to flat most of yesterday ahead of a late kick in new inconsistent W/SW groundswell offering 2-3ft sets on the Mornington Peninsula and Phillip Island.

A peak in swell has been seen this morning, but it's very inconsistent and slow on the early morning high tide, with marginal 1-2ft waves on the Surf Coast and better more defined 3ft sets on the Mornington Peninsula.

Winds should remain favourable for most spots until early afternoon before sea breezes kick in.

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This week and weekend (Oct 18 - 21)

Today's small and slow W/SW groundswell was the first and worst of two expected this week, with the secondary better and bigger swell due to arrive later today and peak tomorrow across our region.

This was generated by a strong storm that developed south-west of WA over the weekend, and came in as forecast across that region yesterday afternoon and this morning.

This provides good confidence in tomorrow's expected size, with the Surf Coast magnets due to offer better though still inconsistent 3ft sets and 4-5ft waves on the Mornington Peninsula beaches. There is the chance for the odd sneaky bigger one, but these will be rare.

Winds now look best for the Surf Coast with a moderate NW breeze, tending W/NW into the afternoon, while the exposed beaches will be best on Friday as the swell eases.

We're looking at easing 2ft to possibly 3ft sets at Surf Coast swell magnets Friday morning, and 4ft+ waves to the east under a freshening N/NE tending N-N/NW breeze.

Saturday looks a lay day with no decent size leftover and W/NW tending W/SW winds as a weakening front pushes across us.

A good spike in new W/SW swell is expected from this front on Sunday, with a tight fetch of gale to severe-gale W'ly winds due to be projected through our western swell window when it forms south of WA on Thursday evening.

The front will lose strength as it moves east, but we should see a good kick in size Sunday morning to 3ft+ on the Surf Coast magnets and 5-6ft to the east of Melbourne.

Winds look as if they'll improve as the front slips to the south-east resulting in a N/NW offshore on the Surf Coast and hopefully N'ly east of Melbourne ahead of afternoon sea breezes.

A mix of W/SW and SW groundswells are then due on Monday, produced by a pre-frontal fetch of W/NW gales pushing in from the south-east Indian Ocean and under WA through the weekend and a small polar low forming south-southwest of WA Thursday evening.

Both swells should fill in Monday and provide 3ft sets across the Surf Coast again and 4-5ft+ waves to the east with favourable N'ly winds.

Following this we'll see further W/SW groundswells from broad and sustained polar and mid-latitude fronts firing up towards and under WA, onwards through the Bight bringing funkier winds, but more on this Friday.