Victorian Surf Forecast by Ben Matson (issued Friday 20th May)

Features of the Forecast (tl;dr)

• Light winds all weekend
• Small easing surf Sat; minor long period reinforcement Sun
• Small surf and light winds tending E then NE and N throughout next week
• Small/mod new swell next weekend
• More swell due the following week

One heck of a low tide in Torquay this morning

Recap

Easing surf on Thursday still managed early 4-5ft sets west of Melbourne and 6ft+ east of Melbourne, with a brief window of W/NW winds before fresh SW breezes deteriorated conditions rapidly by mid-late morning. Smaller surf has prevailed around 2-3ft west of Melbourne and 3-5ft to the east, with light onshore winds.

This weekend (May 21 - 22)

No major changes to the weekend outlook, but a few slight tweaks. 

The current easing trend hasn't been quite as rapid as expected, so early Saturday may still see a few leftover 2ft sets across the Surf Coast. And there probably won't be much wind at all so conditions should be OK. It will however become smaller throughout the day. 

Surf size will be bigger east of Melbourne, easing from 3-4ft to 2-3ft, and if the wind comes up at all, it'll be out of the east. So, that's enough incentive to make it worthwhile.

The small new long period swell due overnight Saturday will build slowly on Sunday but probably won't reach a peak until the afternoon - even then we're looking at very slow, inconsistent 3ft sets (between waves it'll be 1-2ft). However similarly clean conditions are expected with light winds. Early morning may be undersized, so keep your expectations low.

Expect very small slow surf west of Melbourne on Sunday.

Next week (May 23 onwards)

A large blocking high across our immediate swell window will impact our surf outlook in two ways for the entirety of next week - it'll maintain low swell heights (by defecting storm activity away from our region) and it'll also keep conditions nice and clean with light winds. 

They'll eventually swing from the east to the northeast and then the north, so we're looking at an extended run of small clean beachies east of Melbourne, and tiny surf west of Melbourne. A shallow SW change is pegged for Frfiday at the moment.

A series of modest fronts will push through our far swell window mid-late next week and set up a new swell for next weekend (ballpark 3ft+ west of Melbourne), and there's a suggestion for more swell through the early to middle part of the following week as a Long Wave Trough amplifies west of the state, but that's a long time away. 

Have a great weekend!