Victorian forecast by Craig Brokensha (issued Wednesday January 15th)

Best Days: Surf Coast early tomorrow, selected spots to the east Sunday and Monday mornings, Tuesday morning

Features of the Forecast (tl;dr)

• Mix of W/SW groundswell and weaker energy tomorrow with SW winds, early W/NW on the Surf Coast
• Smaller Fri with gusty S winds
• Building SE windswell Sat, peristing at smaller levels Sun/Mon with strong E/SE tending SE winds Sat
• Easing E/NE winds Sun AM ehead of strong S/SE winds into the PM
• Moderate sized, inconsistent W/SW groundswell building Sun, peaking later and more so Mon
• Easing E-E/SE winds Mon ahead of stronger SE winds into the PM
• Easing swell Tue with light NE tending strong SW winds into the PM
• Strong S/SW winds Wed, S-S/SW Thu/Fri

Recap

Small surf with less than perfect but workable winds was seen across all regions yesterday, with the beaches to east fairing best.

This morning our new, long-range W/SW groundswell is starting to fill in with long-lined 3-4ft sets on the beaches to the east under offshore winds (now shifting), 1-2ft to the west and cleaning up ahead of an approaching, strong SW change mid-late afternoon.

New, long-period groundswell this morning ahead of the wind change

This week and next (Jan 16 - 24)

Our current building W/SW groundswell is due to reach a peak tomorrow morning across the state with infrequent 3ft sets due on the Surf Coast, 4-6ft to the east along with some weak, localised windswell following today’s change.

Winds look to tip back to the W/NW for a period tomorrow morning on the Surf Coast before reverting back to the SW, while Friday looks poor owing to fresh S’ly winds writing off the surf across all locations.

Some new mid-period W/SW swell energy is due to be in the water Friday but not to the size the models are showing thanks to them incorrectly combining swells.

Moving into the weekend and we’ve still got our unfavourable, strong E-SE wind regime expected though we’ll see periods of lighter E/NE-NE winds at times to the east as a dynamic, multi-centred low develops in the Tasman Sea.

The winds look least favourable through Saturday initially, strong from the E/SE tending SE, bringing some small to moderate sized SE windswell to the Surf Coast and creating average conditions to the east.

From Sunday winds look to slowly improve for locations to the east, easing and tending E/NE through the morning along with a new, long-range W/SW groundswell on the build.

The source is a great, slow moving frontal progression that’s currently moving across the Heard Island region, generating various fetches of gale to severe-gale W/SW winds.

The progression will ease over the coming days while projecting more north towards Western Australia, out of our swell window, but we should see the long-range energy starting to fill in Sunday morning though strongest into the late afternoon/evening and Monday morning.

The Surf Coast should reach 3ft later Sunday and into Monday with 6ft sets to the east and those morning E/NE winds will tend back to the SE and become strong into the afternoon Sunday, with easing E/SE-E winds on Monday morning, strengthening again from the S/SE through the afternoon.

With the size of the swell the beaches look to max out, better Tuesday as winds shift NE and the swell eases ahead of a trough and strong SW change late afternoon.

This change looks to be followed by strong S/SW winds into Wednesday, holding out of the S-S/SW on Thursday/Friday, writing off the surf for the rest of the week.

Therefore make the most of the small windows coming.