Victorian forecast by Craig Brokensha (issued Wednesday April 9th)

Best Days: Today, tomorrow, Saturday selected spots, Sunday, Tuesday and Wednesday mornings on the beaches

Features of the Forecast (tl;dr)

• Moderate sized SW swell arriving during the morning tomorrow, peaking into the PM, easing Fri AM
• Morning N/NW-N winds tomorrow, tending variable to the west into the PM and tending N/NE-NE to the east into the PM
• Moderate sized mid-period W/SW swell building Fri PM with stronger levels of swell into Sat, easing Sun
• Moderate SW-S/SW tending S/SE winds Fri (outside chance of light W winds early Surf Coast)
• NE-N/NE winds Sat AM, tending E-E/NE into the PM
• Moderate to fresh N/NW winds to the west Sun, N/NE to the east
• Easing swell Mon with light to moderate S/SE-SE winds, freshening
• Smaller Tue with a reinforcing S/SW swell for later, easing Wed
• Fresh E/NE winds Tue AM, SE into the PM
• Moderate E/NE-NE tending SE winds Wed

Recap

Our reinforcing S/SW swell continued to provide great waves across the Surf Coast yesterday with clean conditions and 5ft+ waves across the selected reefs, coming in at 6ft to occasionally 8ft east of Melbourne but with limited options.

Today, the swell is easing but cleaner to the east with plenty of energy hanging in at 3-4ft on the Surf Coast and 5-6ft to the east. Winds should remain favourable until early afternoon before sea breezes kick in.

Great surf again yesterday morning

This week and weekend (Apr 10 - 13)

The coming period looks great with fun pulses of swell under generally favourable local winds for both regions.

The swell from earlier in the week will continue to ease into tomorrow morning, but before lunch, a reinforcing pulse of SW swell should arrive, peaking into the afternoon. This was generated by a small but strong low tracking east-southeast under the country earlier in the week, generating a fetch of gale to near severe-gale W’ly winds.

This should produce a spike in size to 3ft to occasionally 4ft on the Surf Coast through the afternoon with 5-6ft sets to the east under N/NW-N winds that should tend variable to the west into the afternoon and N/NE-NE to the east after lunch.

A temporary drop in swell is due Friday morning again ahead of some new, building mid-period W/SW swell energy into the afternoon.

Conditions look average in any case as a trough linked to the swell generating system for the afternoon moves through, bringing moderate SW-S/SW winds that are due to shift S/SE into the afternoon. There’s an outside chance for dawn W’ly winds on the Surf Coast but it’s not worth the worry with plenty more quality surf days to choose from.

Now, as touched on through Monday, we’re set to see a healthy frontal progression moving in, under the country over the coming days, with an initial fetch of strong W/SW winds under Western Australia today due to generate some building mid-period energy into Friday afternoon.

Slightly stronger winds to our south-west tomorrow, possibly reaching gale-force at times should generate some larger mid-period SW swell for Saturday and Sunday morning.

The progression as a whole looks quite elongated, resulting in a prolonged swell event, with Friday due to see build sets 3ft to possibly 4ft through the late afternoon on the Surf Coast, at least 6ft to the east, with Saturday seeing stronger 4-5ft surf on the Surf Coast and 6ft to possibly 8ft sets to the east.

Winds look NE-N/NE on Saturday morning, favouring the beaches with afternoon E-E/NE sea breezes, with Sunday seeing great local offshore winds (N/NW Surf Coast, N/NE to the east) holding all day from the same direction across both coasts.

The surf should still be in the 4ft range Sunday morning across the Surf Coast and 6ft+ to the east, smaller Monday even with the arrival of a long-range groundswell.

This is thanks to the groundswell being generated in our far swell window, south of South Africa earlier this week and as a result the accompanying swell will only be small to moderate in size and very inconsistent.

The Surf Coast may see 3ft sets Monday with 4-5ft waves to the east and a trough overnight Sunday may leave lingering SE winds.

Into Tuesday/Wednesday, E/NE-NE winds will favour the exposed beaches as the swell continues to slowly ease with a new S/SW groundswell likely to show into later Tuesday and Wednesday morning.

Strengthening fetches of unfavourably aligned W/NW-NW gales look to produce a moderate sized increase in energy that may come in at 2-3ft on the Surf Coast and 4-5ft to the east but we’ll confirm this Friday.

Otherwise it looks like we’ll enter a slower period into the end of the week and early the following week, but we’ll have a closer look at this Friday.