Victoria Forecast by Craig Brokensha (issued Friday 17th January)

Best Days: Desperate surfers Sunday mid-late morning, exposed beaches Wednesday morning

Recap

Poor conditions with strong onshore winds yesterday and an easing swell, poor again today across most locations with S/SW tending E/SE winds. There was a small window of more variable breezes across Phillip Island and the southern end of the Mornington Peninsula offering average but grovelly waves for the keen.

This weekend and next week (Jan 18 - 24)

In short, and as discussed in the last couple of updates, the coming forecast period is poor with onshore winds and weak windswells, or cleaner conditions and no size.

Over the weekend an inland surface trough squeezing a strong high to the south-west of the state will produce strengthening E/SE winds through Bass Strait and along the coastal strip, generating poor levels of SE windswell. There'll also be some mid-period easing SW swell in the mix tomorrow, gone by Sunday.

Winds tomorrow will be fresh to strong from the E/SE, possibly easing for a short period through the morning and more SE into the afternoon with 3ft+ or so of SE windswell and easing 3-4ft+ sets to the east.

Sunday may see winds ease and tend more variable out of the E/SE for a period in the morning (otherwise fresh SE), but expect low quality, junky and easing SE windswell from 3ft on the Surf Coast and 2-3ft or so on the Mornington Peninsula.

Monday will definitely be a lay day as winds swing back to the SE-S/SE with no new swell (just windswell) similar Tuesday with persistent onshore winds.

As touched on in Wednesday's update, a mid-latitude storm is expected to push in mid-late week and this should swing winds around to the N/NE ahead of it on Wednesday, but unfortunately there's no significant swell on the cards.

A very inconsistent long-period groundswell won't have any size attached to it and isn't expected to arrive until later in the day, so expect clean and fading 2ft of windswell on the Mornington Peninsula.

Winds will shift to the west on Thursday and Friday as the mid-latitude frontal progression pushes in from the west, with no size expected until Friday/Saturday. This will be due to an initial strong mid-latitude low sitting too far north to generate any decent swell.

It'll be really west and only impacting the Mornington Peninsula and with those average westerly winds. As the progression dips south-east across us we should see some better swell generated through our swell window, but we'll have to review this on Monday. Have a great weekend!