Victorian Surf Forecast by Craig Brokensha (issued Wednesday 30th March)

Best Days: No good days

Features of the Forecast (tl;dr)

• Moderate to large SW groundswell filling in tomorrow with strong S/SE winds (SE east of Melbourne in the AM)
• Easing mix of SW and S/SW swells Fri with strong SE winds
• Moderate sized SE windswell tomorrow and Fri, easing slowly on the weekend
• Gusty SE winds Sat and moderate S/SE tending S winds Sun with small to tiny levels of swell
• Light W/NW tending SW winds Mon with small to tiny levels of swell

Recap

Small leftovers the last two days with bumpy conditions across all regions (cleaner across Phillip Island yesterday morning), and similar today. The exposed beaches have been workable for the keen.

This week and weekend (Mar 31 – Apr 3)

Wind. And strong at that.

That's what we're looking at for the coming days across the Victorian region as a strong high pressure system muscles in from the west, squeezing up against a strong low forming in the Tasman Sea.

This will direct a strong south-east pressure gradient across the state which won't release its grip until Sunday/Monday and by then all the swell will be gone.

Tomorrow will be poor with strong S/SE winds on the Surf Coast and a period of strong SE winds in the morning to the east along with our moderate-large SW groundswell.

This swell has been and is still being generated by an initially strong but now weaker, slow moving polar low moving east along the polar shelf.

A peak in size is likely through the afternoon across all locations with building sets to 4-5ft on the Surf Coast magnets (possibly rare bigger one) and 6ft to occasionally 8ft to the east.

The swell will start to ease through Friday though with strong to gale-force SW winds still being generated in our southern swell window this morning, it'll be a slower easing trend on the Surf Coast but strong SE winds will continue to create poor conditions.

Saturday looks no better with gusty SE winds and a further drop in size with nowhere to recommend. All these SE winds will kick up moderate levels of SE windswell tomorrow and Friday, easing slowly through the weekend.

Come Sunday the pressure gradient between the high and low will weaken with weaker but still moderate S/SE winds due to persist across most locations with no decent size or power left. The Mornington Peninsula looks to be 2ft max, but more so 1-2ft, with a low quality windswell to 1-2ft on the Surf Coast.

The now, weaker low is actually due to swing back into the Gippsland coast Sunday, with Monday seeing W/NW tending SW winds but with no new swell.

Troughy weather looks to persist into Tuesday with variable tending S/SE winds ahead of a return to winds from the eastern quadrant into the end of the week.

Swell wise there's nothing major on the cards with small, background levels of W/SW swell due Wednesday from a weak mid-latitude low approaching Western Australia on the weekend. This may be followed by further small pulses Thursday and Friday but not above 2ft on the Surf Coast and 3-4ft to the east. More on this in the coming updates.