Victoria Forecast by Craig Brokensha (issued Monday 2nd September)

Best Days: Surf Coast later Wednesday keen surfer, beaches Thursday morning

Recap

Good waves Saturday with a drop in S/SW groundswell from Friday and clean conditions across most beaches, easing from 2-3ft on the Surf Coast and 4ft sets on the Mornington Peninsula.

Sunday was small to tiny and windier, only for the desperate and keen.

Today a very inconsistent W/SW groundswell isn't providing much love, mixed in with a tiny W/SW windswell and only coming in at 1-1.5ft on the Surf Coast, 2-3ft to the east.

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This week and weekend (Sep 3 – 8)

Welcome to spring, and also a mediocre spring like outlook.

Tomorrow should be clean across most locations with N/NW breeze through the morning, but swell wise we're not looking at anything better than today. A small mid-period W/SW swell from a front moving through looks off the cards. We'll be relying on inconsistent and easing W/SW groundswell from 1-1.5ft on the Surf Coast and 2-3ft to the east.

Wednesday morning will start tiny again, with a small mix of W/SW swells due to build into the afternoon, generated by a weakening mid-latitude frontal progression moving in from the west.

As touched on last Friday, there'll be no real strength to the activity dipping south-east from over WA, with fetches of strong to near gale-force W-W/NW winds produced under the Bight, in our western swell window.

For the most size target late Wednesday and more so Thursday morning for 2ft to occasionally 3ft sets on the Surf Coast swell magnets, and 3-4ft+ waves to the east.

Conditions will be clean on the Surf Coast Wednesday morning with a NW breeze, but tiny swell, onshore from the S/SW later afternoon when the new swell starts showing with a shallow change.

Thursday looks the pick for the exposed beaches with a NE offshore breeze ahead of E/SE-SE sea breezes.

Moving into the end of the week the models diverge on the pace at which a deepening mid-latitude low moves in towards us at from the Bight.

ECMWF has the low slower moving resulting in NE tending NW winds Friday with the small easing swell from Thursday, while GFS has the low tracking faster with NW tending SW winds as it moves across us.

Either way there's no new significant swell on the cards into Saturday with the only swell generating system being the low itself and that will bring onshore windswells from the southern quadrant.

Into Sunday there's an outside chance for a new S/SW groundswell across the state, but the models diverge on the strength and structure of the polar storm generating this swell later this week. EC will see nothing of significance while GFS is much better. Winds either way look to be from the western quadrant, but we'll have to have a closer look at the possible size from this swell on Wednesday. At this stage I'd keep your expectations low.