Western Australia Surf Forecast by Craig Brokensha (issued Wednesday 20th January)

Best Days: Keen surfers protected spots in the South West Thursday morning, swell magnets Friday morning, Thursday and Friday next week

Recap

A mix of swells provided good clean 4-5ft waves across the South West yesterday morning with 1-1.5ft sets around Perth, easing back into the afternoon.

Today a new S/SW groundswell has started to fill in across the South West with good clean 3-5ft sets under SE winds. Mandurah and Perth remained tiny and around 1-1.5ft with the less than favourable S/SW swell direction.

This week and weekend (Jan 19 – 24)

Today's building S/SW groundswell is expected to peak overnight, but tomorrow morning should still reveal sets in the 4-5ft range across exposed breaks in the South West with tiny 1-1.5ft waves around Perth, fading through the day and further into Friday.

Winds look to swing back to a less favourable S/SE'ly tomorrow morning across all locations, limiting the best waves to protected breaks, which will be much smaller under the southerly swell direction.

Friday should see better E/SE offshores but small easing 3ft+ sets in the South West.

The swell is expected to bottom out through the weekend with less than favourable SE winds Saturday from the SE around Margs (E'ly around Perth but no swell), similar into Sunday.

Next week onwards (Jan 25 onwards)

A small mix of SW groundswells are due into Monday but to no major size at all, with infrequent 2-3ft+ sets at exposed breaks in the South West with average S/SE winds, easing back through Tuesday.

For the rest of next week there's still nothing significant due as a large blocking high deflects major swell generating systems away from us.

One such system which will produce a fetch of SW gales while skirting around the high, generating an inconsistent SW groundswell for Thursday, building to 4-5ft, easing off slowly through Friday and further into the weekend. Perth probably won't budge the 1ft range and remain tiny.

Conditions are looking OK with SE winds Thursday, possibly improving with E/SE winds Friday morning, but we'll review this again Friday.