Victorian Surf Forecast by Craig Brokensha (issued Wednesday 16th October)

Best Days: Keen surfers tomorrow morning on the beaches and possibly Sunday/Monday mornings

Features of the Forecast (tl;dr)

• Generally small, weak swells with a couple of windows of lighter winds in the mornings (Thu/Sat/Sun)
• Stronger swell due Tuesday/Wednesday but winds look to be onshore, causing issues

Recap

The swell dropped out into yesterday morning leaving tiny, peaky 1ft+ waves on the Surf Coast and 2ft sets across the Mornington Peninsula with early clean conditions ahead of a strengthening southerly change.

This heralds a run of poor conditions with today looking terrible with a localised windswell and strong onshore winds.

This week and weekend (Oct 17 - 20)

While on Monday the outlook was mostly a write-off due to small, weak swells and very average onshore winds, we’re now looking at a couple of windows of cleaner conditions across both coasts, though the swell outlook hasn’t improved.

A weak low moving through our swell window on Monday and yesterday has produced a weak W/SW swell that should fill in this afternoon, providing 2ft sets on the Surf Coast, 3ft to occasionally 4ft on the Mornington Peninsula.

This swell will fade tomorrow, mixed in with a peaky SE windswell as a short-lived though strong fetch of E/SE winds develop through Bass Strait this afternoon and evening.

What we will see tomorrow morning is winds ease and tend variable out of the E-NE through the morning, with peaky easing surf from 3ft on the Mornington Peninsula, bumpy early on the Surf Coast but improving with 2ft peaks. It won’t be great but the beaches to the east are likely worth a quick paddle through the morning.

Friday still looks like a lay day as a trough pushes through bringing strong W/SW-SW winds and a poor, local windswell with no size or quality.

A weak front pushing in behind the trough should tip winds back to the W/NW on Saturday morning across the Surf Coast, creating cleaner conditions, but swell wise there doesn’t look to be anything over a weak 2ft on the sets across the magnets, 3ft+ to the east.

A slightly better, though still weak and small mid-period S/SW swell is due to fill in Sunday, generated by a weak polar front that’s currently south-southwest of Western Australia. The fetch strength is minimal but it projects slightly towards us today, producing a small spike in swell that should build to 2ft to possibly 3ft on the Surf Coast magnets through the day, 3-4ft+ to the east.

The morning will be smaller and winds look light from the SE-S/SE, creating OK conditions for the keen, fresh into the afternoon. Monday could see similar winds as the mid-period swell eases, but we’ll confirm this in Friday’s notes.

Moving into next week, and the stronger polar low discussed in Monday’s notes is still on the cards, with it forming north of the Heard Island region tomorrow. It’ll be tight and small at first but broaden while generating a healthy fetch of strong to gale-force W/SW winds through our swell window while tracking east-northeast. The low will weaken while approaching us, clipping the state Monday evening as a trough, bringing a change in winds.

The low should generate a moderate sized W/SW groundswell that’ll build Tuesday and likely peak through the late afternoon to 3-4ft+ on the Surf Coast and a solid 6ft to the east. Winds will be poor though and fresh out of the S/SW, lighter though still S/SE Wednesday as the swell eases.

Beyond this the outlook remains slow, but more on this in the coming updates.