Victorian Forecast by Craig Brokensha (issued Wednesday August 14th)

Best Days: Today exposed beaches, tomorrow, Friday morning exposed beaches, Monday exposed breaks

Features of the Forecast (tl;dr)

• Small-moderate sized W'ly swell for later this PM, peaking tomorrow AM with local offshore tending N/NE winds while freshening
• Easing swell Fri with strong N-N/NE winds
• Tiny Sat with N/NW-NW tending S/SW winds, strengthening later
• Poor localised S windswell Sun with strong S/SW winds
• Easing windswell Mon, with a new, small-moderate sized W/SW groundswell with E/NE-NE winds
• Easing swell Tue with N/NW winds

Recap

The surf was slow and small to tiny across the Surf Coast yesterday with 1-2ft sets across 13th Beach, while to the east windy 3-4ft sets were seen, best early and late with the tide.

This morning winds are a bit better across the exposed beaches with an inconsistent W’ly groundswell to 4ft on the sets, 1-2ft on the Surf Coast magnets. Winds will go more NE into the afternoon favouring the exposed beaches all day.

Small, clean swell this morning

This week and next (Aug 15 - 23)

Into this afternoon and more so tomorrow, our better pulse of mid-period W’ly swell is due to fill in, generated by a strong frontal system pushing under Western Australia earlier in the week.

This should provide a little more size to the Surf Coast magnets to 2ft to occasionally 3ft with 4-5ft+ sets to the east, peaking tomorrow morning and then easing later in the day.

Conditions will be great with light, local offshore winds, tending N/NE into the afternoon and freshening.

As the swell eases Friday, strong N-N/NE winds will again favour the exposed beaches with easing 2ft sets max on the Surf Coast magnets, 3-4ft to the east.

Moving into the weekend and a broad but weak low moving in from the west looks to be generally poor for swell production, with the swell generating winds on its western flank being more S/SE than anything. The swell looks to also arrive after an onshore change Saturday afternoon.

In general we’ll see no real size across both regions besides some weak, localised windswell.

It looks like NW winds will create clean conditions on Saturday morning but with tiny surf, shifting gusty S/SW into the afternoon and then strong S/SW through Sunday along with a poor increase in localised swell.

With the low clearing east early next week, winds are due to shift quickly back to the NE on Monday along with a new pulse of long-range W’ly groundswell.

This swell is being generated by a tight low that’s formed south-east of Madagascar and is moving east while generating a fetch of severe-gale to storm-force W/SW winds.

A secondary but less favourably aligned intensification as it moves closer towards Western Australia should help produce a bit of extra size.

It’ll be inconsistent but the Surf Coast magnets should offer 2-3ft sets with 4-5ft+ waves to the east, easing into Tuesday along with stronger N tending N/NW winds.

Longer term, another mid-latitude low moving in from the west may bring some small W’ly swell Wednesday, followed by more promising frontal activity later week. More on this Friday.