Victoria Forecast by Craig Brokensha (issued Wednesday 22nd May)

Best Days: Surf Coast every day, beaches Thursday and Friday mornings

Recap

A secondary stronger pulse of S/SW groundswell yesterday morning to 3-4ft on the Surf Coast and 4-5ft on the Mornington Peninsula and with clean conditions across both coasts. The swell started to ease into the afternoon, much smaller today and back to 2ft on the Surf Coast and 3ft+ on the Mornington Peninsula.

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This week and weekend (May 23 – 26)

The size will continue to ease through this afternoon ahead of our new building mid-period W/SW swell tomorrow, followed by stronger and bigger levels of groundswell later in the day but more so Friday.

A broad and slow moving polar front pushing up towards WA and then slowly east towards us while weakening has generated this mix of swells. The storm is currently south of WA and SA though we'll see one final intensification on its tail, generating a fetch of slow moving W/SW gales more in our south-western swell window. This will slow the easing trend of the groundswell on Saturday as the direction swings more SW.

Tomorrow looks to start around 2ft on the Surf Coast and 3-4ft on the Mornington Peninsula, with the size slowly rising towards 3ft and 5ft respectively later afternoon. Friday should see a peak in size to 3-4ft on the Surf Coast swell magnets, 5-6ft+ on the Mornington Peninsula, with Saturday coming in a similar size through the morning, easing into the afternoon.

Conditions will be great the whole period on the Surf Coast with a persistent N/NW offshore wind, while selected locations to the east will be great as well, with the beaches on the Mornington Peninsula cleanest Thursday and Friday mornings as winds have a more N'ly bias.

A new pulse of W/SW groundswell is due on Sunday, generated by a small and tight low moving in under the country tomorrow afternoon and Friday.

A very small fetch of gale to severe-gale W/SW winds will be projected towards us, weakening south of South Australia, with the swell due to peak Sunday, keeping the Surf Coast around 3ft to possibly 4ft at magnets and 6ft on the Mornington Peninsula.

A secondary front firing up on the back of this small low will push north of our swell window on the weekend, but move across us Sunday bringing strong W/NW winds, W'ly later afternoon.

No decent swell is due off this front at this stage, with a drop in size expected Monday from 3ft+ and 5-6ft respectively across both coasts with strengthening NW winds ahead of a much more significant cold outbreak.

A large and powerful SW groundswell event is expected through mid-next week owing to a strong and pronounced node of the Long Wave Trough developing across the south-east corner of the country. This will bring back to back cold fronts, snow to the mountains and the first proper cold outbreak for the year.

In the Southern Ocean we'll see a broad and elongated polar front projecting a fetch of severe-gale to storm-force SW-S/SW winds through our swell windows for a significant amount of time, as the LWT remains slow moving. We're expected to see a large and long-period SW tending S/SW groundswell event building Tuesday and peaking Wednesday. Winds look favourable for protected spots and strong from the W/NW on Tuesday as the swell builds, less so Wednesday and from the W/SW-SW, but more on this in Friday's update.