Nice weekend ahead; solid next week
Victorian Surf Forecast by Ben Matson (issued Friday 12th May)
Features of the Forecast (tl;dr)
- Nice weekend of waves, best suited to open beaches; sizeable east of Melbourne
- Low point Monday
- Solid new swell Tues but with generally onshore winds (poss brief W/NW window at dawn)
- Strong though easing swells for the rest of the week with better winds
- Reinforcing swell Fri/Sat, holding through the weekend
- More swell for the following week
Recap
Fun though easing surf managed early 3-4ft sets east of Melbourne early Thursday, abating to a slow 2ft this morning. West of Melbourne eased from 2ft to 1ft. Conditions have been clean for most part up until the arrival of a lunchtime SW change today, which is ruffling conditions across most regions this afternoon.
Tiny but clean in Torquay this AM
Tiny but clean at Portsea this AM
This weekend (May 13 - 14)
No real change to the weekend forecast.
Essentially, we’ve got a brief flush of W/SW swell for Saturday that will favour the open beaches east of Melbourne, before easing in size into Sunday.
This swell has been generated by a cut-off low pushing through the Bight, which then tracked south-east towards its current position underneath Tasmania, managing to spend only a short period of time within our swell window. So, not only will the swell have a lot of west in its direction, it’ll be a relatively short lived affair.
It’s also with mentioning that swells sourced from these kinds of systems often produce very inconsistent set waves - no matter how exposed your coast is - but this characteristic is exaggerated at locations where the swell undergoes refraction and diffraction (in this case, the Surf Coast, which will be far more off-axis to the incoming energy than locations east of Melbourne). So, expect very inconsistent waves across this region.
Fortunately, conditions are looking clean both days with light variable winds, probably tending NE if anything. This is ideal for most open beaches.
As for size, I’m expecting most of the Surf Coast to be pretty slow going in the 2ft range on Saturday, though some of the regional swell magnets could see stray 3ft sets. The upper end of this size range should be more prevalent along the Bellarine region, and then we’ll see bigger surf at the Mornington Peninsula’s open beaches (4-5ft+), with bigger waves again at Phillip Island’s open stretches (say, 5-6ft+). Anywhere even partially sheltered will be smaller in size.
Wave heights will trend down through Sunday, but with clean conditions there should be excellent options around, particularly east of Melbourne. Keep your expectations low along the Surf Coast due to the borderline size.
So, pick a coast according to your size preference this weekend, and you should do well across most of the beachbreaks.
Next week (May 15 onwards)
Surf size will bottom out on Monday morning and winds will gradually freshen from the NW, so options will be somewhat limited. Light winds may occur early morning so this will be the best time to hit up the open beaches east of Melbourne.
A strong conveyor belt of polar fronts and low presently forming near Heard Island will strengthen over the weekend, and their first groundswell of note will push through the region later Monday, building strongly by Tuesday morning before fluctuating in strength for much of the following week.
Tuesday’s initial increase should push 4-5ft along the Surf Coast (occ 6ft sets at the regional swell magnets by the afternoon) however it’ll be accompanied by a fresh to strong W/SW tending SW change. It’s currently modelled for an early-morning arrival, however this also gives a potential brief window of W/NW winds along the Surf Coast at dawn. East of Melbourne will be considerably bigger with decent (though smaller) options inside protected areas.
Generally light winds are expected Wed (S’ly) and Thurs (W’ly) with the swell slowly easing from 3-5ft west from Melbourne, with bigger surf to the east, again favouring protected spots.
A reinforcing pulse of SW swell from another polar low is then expected around Friday or Saturday, which should keep the region flush with plenty of good waves through the following weekend.
Long term suggests strong pre-winter fronts will maintain strength through the entire swell window into the following week too, which suggests the pattern should remain active.
Have a great weekend!
Comments
BOM forecasting W/NW Tuesday morning.
Hmm, swell seems to be running behind schedule, nothing showing on Sorell or Nepean buoys at the moment. Can't be too far off though.. it's showing nicely at the Portland buoy (but not Apollo Bay).
OK... Tp at Cape Sorell just jumped to almost 17 seconds. So it's on the way, but won't arrive for a few hours yet.
That push in the swell really hit hard at around 1pm on the open beaches (east of phillip island). We got in some absolute bombs before the SE breeze came up and ruined the clean lines. Well overhead with alot of water moving around, you could really feel the difference in the swell period when it arrived.
Ben do you think the offshore and outgoing tide held it back a bit and as you say made it run a bit later than expected?
Amazing weekend on the open beaches!
Local winds (or indeed any wind off shore) don't "hold back" swell energy generated hundreds or thousands of kilometres away - any perceived relationship is coincidental.
Incoming/outgoing tides can influence the surf, but - unless you're at a location with a very large tidal range, and/or significant tidal stream flow - not dramatically affect the surf with regards to the arrival times of swell fronts etc.
In this case, the weekend's swell was just a little later than expected.
Interesting, thanks for the reply. We were all out for an early surf sat wondering when the swell was going to hit, talking about the forecast you guys had made and had guessed maybe as the tide bottomed out it really seemed to hold it back. Then later about 2 hours into the incoming tide it really jumped up 2x maybe 2.5x times the energy, i was spewing that SE wind came up. Just a coincidence then, but amazing to see it unfold.
Seems the wind turned SW at Airey's at about a quarter to 6 this Tuesday morning, a very different day to yesterday's beautiful clean but blustery NWs and warm winds. Must admit I do like waking up to a bit of rain and weather. Wondering which of the models is most accurate at present, my little marker point has ECM saying 2.6m@14s and GFS 2.2@17s. Nepean says (at a more exposed location) 4.82@16.3. Not yet light to see.
Good numbers everywhere VJ! 5.5 sig down at Cape Bridgey @ 17s. Pity about those winds and the morning high